Z  O  N  M, 


CHRISTMAS 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON    •    CHICAGO 
DALLAS    •    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


MARY',FfL:tEf);HER  ARMS  WITH  HAY  AND 
'  TO  THE  MANGER" 


CHRISTMAS 

A  STORY 


BY 
ZONA     GALE 

AUTHOR  OF   "THE  LOVES   OF  PELLEAS  AND   ETARRE" 
"FRIENDSHIP  VILLAGE,"   ETC. 


WITH    ILLUSTRATIONS    BY 

LEON   V.    SOLON 


Nefo  gorfe 

THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1912 

yf/7  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  igia, 
BY  THE  McCLURE  PUBLICATIONS,  INCORPORATED. 

COPYRIGHT,  1912, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  October,  1912. 


NcrtocoU 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

"Mary  filled   her  arms  with  hay,  and  turned  to  the 

manger" Frontispiece 


FACING 
PAGE 


u  He  stood  looking  at  it  from  part  way  across  the  road  "  76 
u  Across  the  still    fields   came  flashing  the  point   of 

flame" no 

"  The  children  began  to  sing,  '  Go  bury  Saint  Nicklis '  "  150 

"  Their  way  led  east  between  high  banks  of  snow  "        .  200 

"The  three  men  stepped  into  the  lamplight"         .        .  240 


IT  was  in  October  that  Mary  Chavah  burned 
over  the  grass  of  her  lawn,  and  the  flame  ran 
free  across  the  place  where  in  Spring  her  wild 
flower  bed  was  made.  Two  weeks  later  she 
had  there  a  great  patch  of  purple  violets.  And 
all  Old  Trail  Town,  which  takes  account  of  its 
neighbours'  flowers,  of  the  migratory  birds,  of 
eclipses,  and  the  like,  came  to  see  the  wonder. 

"Mary  Chavah!"  said  most  of  the  village, 
"you're  the  luckiest  woman  alive.  If  a  miracle 
was  bound  to  happen,  it'd  get  itself  happened 
to  you." 

"I  don't  believe  in  miracles,  though,"  Mary- 
wrote  to  Jenny  Wing.  "  These  come  just  natural 
—  only  we  don't  know  how." 


2  CHRISTMAS 

"That  is  miracles,"  Jenny  wrote  back. 
"They  do  come  natural  —  we  don't  know 
how." 

"At  this  rate,"  said  Ellen  Bourne,  one  of 
Mary's  neighbours,  "you'll  be  having  roses 
bloom  in  your  yard  about  Christmas  time. 
For  a  Christmas  present." 

"I  don't  believe  in  Christmas,"  Mary  said. 
"I  thought  you  knew  that.  But  I'll  take 
the  roses,  though,  if  they  come  in  the  Winter," 
she  added,  with  her  queer  flash  of  smile. 

When  it  was  dusk,  or  early  in  the  morning, 
Mary  Chavah,  with  her  long  shawl  over  her 
head,  stooped  beside  the  violets  and  loosened 
the  earth  about  them  with  her  whole  hand, 
and  as  if  she  reverenced  violets  more  than 
finger  tips.  And  she  thought :  — 

"Ain't  it  just  as  if  Spring  was  right  over  back 
of  the  air  all  the  time  —  and  it  could  come  if 
we  knew  how  to  call  it  ?  But  we  don't  know." 


CHRISTMAS  3 

But  whatever  she  thought  about  it,  Mary 
kept  in  her  heart.  For  it  was  as  if  not  only 
Spring,  but  new  life,  or  some  other  holy  thing 
were  nearer  than  one  thought  and  had  spoken 
to  her,  there  on  the  edge  of  Winter. 
And  Old  Trail  Town  asked  itself :  — 
"Ain't  Mary  Chavah  the  funniest?  Look 
how  nice  she  is  about  everything  —  and  yet 
you  know  she  won't  never  keep  Christmas  at 
all.  No,  sir.  She  ain't  kept  a  single  Christmas 
in  years.  I  donno  why.  .  .  ." 


II 

MOVING  about  on  his  little  lawn  in  the  dark, 
Ebenezer  Rule  was  aware  of  two  deeper  shadows 
before  him.  They  were  between  him  and  the 
leafless  lilacs  and  mulberries  that  lined  the 
street  wall.  A  moment  before  he  had  been 
looking  at  that  darkness  and  remembering  how, 
once,  as  a  little  boy,  he  had  slept  there  under 
the  wall  and  had  dreamed  that  he  had  a  king 
dom. 

"Who  is't  ? "  he  asked  sharply. 

" Hello,  Ebenezer/7  said  Simeon  Buck,  "it's 
only  me  and  Abel.  We're  all." 

Ebenezer  Rule  came  toward  them.  It  was 
so  dark  that  they  could  barely  distinguish 
each  other.  Their  voices  had  to  do  it  all. 

"What  you  doing  out  here  ?"  one  of  the 
deeper  shadows  demanded. 


CHRISTMAS  5 

"Oh,  nothing,"  said  Ebenezer,  irritably,  "not 
a  thing." 

He  did  not  ask  them  to  go  in  the  house,  and 
the  three  stood  there  awkwardly,  handling  the 
time  like  a  blunt  instrument.  Then  Simeon 
Buck,  proprietor  of  the  Simeon  Buck  North 
American  Dry  Goods  Exchange,  plunged  into 
what  they  had  come  to  say. 

"Ebenezer,"  he  said,  with  those  variations  of 
intonation  which  mean  an  effort  to  be  delicate, 
"  is  —  is  there  any  likelihood  that  the  factory 
will  open  up  this  Fall  ?" 

"No,  there  ain't,"  Ebenezer  said,  like  some 
thing  shutting. 

"Nor  —  nor  this  Winter?"  Simeon  pursued. 

"No,  sir,"  said  Ebenezer,  like  something 
opening  again  to  shut  with  a  bang. 

"Well,  if  you're  sure  — "  said  Simeon. 

Ebenezer  cut  him  short.  "I'm  dead  sure," 
he  said.  "I've  turned  over  my  orders  to  my 


6  CHRISTMAS 

brother's  house  in  the  City.  He  can  handle 
'em  all  and  not  have  to  pay  his  men  a  cent 
more  wages."  And  this  was  as  if  something 
had  been  locked. 

"Well,"  said  Simeon,  "then,  Abel,  I  move 
we  go  ahead." 

Abel  Ames,  proprietor  of  the  Granger  County 
Merchandise  Emporium  ("The  A.  T.  Stewart's 
of  the  Middle  West,"  he  advertised  it), 
sighed  heavily  —  a  vast,  triple  sigh,  that 
seemed  to  sigh  both  in  and  out,  as  a  school 
boy  whistles. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "I  hate  to  do  it.  But  I'll 
be  billblowed  if  I  want  to  think  of  paying  for 
a  third  or  so  of  this  town's  Christmas  presents 
and  carrying  'em  right  through  the  Winter.  I 
done  that  last  year,  and  Fourth  of  July  I  had  all 
I  could  do  to  keep  from  wishing  most  of  the 
crowd  Merry  Christmas,  'count  of  their  still 
owing  me.  I'm  a  merchant  and  a  citizen, 


CHRISTMAS  7 

but  I  ain't  no  patent  adjustable  Christmas 
tree." 

"Me  neither,"  Simeon  said.  "Last  year  it 
was  me  give  a  silk  cloak  and  a  Five  Dollar 
umberella  and  a  fur  bore  and  a  bushel  of  knick- 
knicks  to  the  folks  in  this  town.  My  name 
wa'n't  on  the  cards,  but  it's  me  that's  paid  for 
'em  —  up  to  now.  I'm  sick  of  it.  The  store 
keepers  of  this  town  may  make  a  good  thing 
out  of  Christmas,  but  they'd  ought  to  get  some 
of  the  credit  instead  of  giving  it  all,  by  Josh." 

"What  you  going  to  do?"  inquired  Eben- 
ezer,  dryly. 

"  Well,  of  course  last  year  was  an  exceptional 
year,"  said  Abel,  "owing  — " 

He  hesitated  to  say  "owing  to  the  failure  of 
the  Ebenezer  Rule  Factory  Company,"  and 
so  stammered  with  the  utmost  delicacy,  and 
skipped  a  measure. 

"And  we  thought,"  Simeon  finished,  "that 


8  CHRISTMAS 

if  the  factory  wasn't  going  to  open  up  this 
Winter,  we'd  work  things  so's  to  have  little 
or  no  Christmas  in  town  this  year  —  being  so 
much  of  the  present  giving  falls  on  us  to  carry 
on  our  books." 

"It  ain't  only  the  factory  wages,  of  course," 
Abel  interposed,  "it's  the  folks's  savings  being 
et  up  in — " 

" — the  failure,"  he  would  have  added,  but 
skipped  a  mere  beat  instead. 

"  —  and  we  want  to  try  to  give  'em  a  chance 
to  pay  us  up  for  last  Christmas  before  they  come 
on  to  themselves  with  another  celebration," 
he  added  reasonably. 

Ebenezer  Rule  laughed  —  a  descending  scale 
of  laughter  that  seemed  to  have  no  organs 
wherewith  to  function  in  the  open,  and  so  never 
got  beyond  the  gutturals. 

"How  you  going  to  fix  it  ?"  he  inquired  again. 

"Why,"  said  Simeon,  "everybody  in  town's 


CHRISTMAS  9 

talking  that  they  ain't  going  to  give  anybody 
anything  for  Christmas.  Some  means  it  and 
some  don't.  Some'll  do  it  and  some'll  back  out. 
But  the  churches  has  decided  to  omit  Christmas 
exercises  altogether  this  year.  Some  thought  to 
have  speaking  pieces,  but  everybody  concluded 
if  they  had  exercises  without  oranges  and  candy 
the  children'd  go  home  disappointed,  so  they've 
left  the  whole  thing  slide  — " 

"It  don't  seem  just  right  for  'em  not  to  cele 
brate  the  birth  of  our  Lord  just  because  they 
can't  afford  the  candy,"  Abel  Ames  observed 
mildly,  but  Simeon  hurried  on :  — 

" —  slide,  and  my  idea  and  Abel's  is  to  get  the 
town  meeting  to  vote  a  petition  to  the  same 
effect  asking  the  town  not  to  try  to  do  anything 
with  their  Christmas  this  year.  We  heard  the 
factory  wasn't  going  to  open,  and  we  thought 
if  we  could  tell  'em  that  for  sure,  it  would 
settle  it  —  and  save  him  and  me  and  all  the 


10  CHRISTMAS 

rest  of  'em.  Would  —  would  you  be  willing 
for  us  to  tell  the  town  meeting  that?  It's  to 
night  —  we're  on  the  way  there." 

"Sure,"  said  Ebenezer  Rule,  "tell  'em.  And 
you  might  point  out  to  'em,"  he  added,  with  his 
spasm  of  gutturals,  "that  failures  is  often  salu 
tary  measures.  ,  Public  benefactions.  Fixes 
folks  so's  they  can't  spend  their  money  fool." 

He  walked  with  them  across  the  lawn, 
going  between  them  and  guiding  them  among  the 
empty  aster  beds. 

"They  think  I  et  up  their  savings  in  the  fail 
ure,"  he  went  on,  "when  all  I  done  is  to  bring 
'em  face  to  face  with  the  fact  that  for  years 
they've  been  overspending  themselves.  It  takes 
Christmas  to  show  that  up.  This  whole 
Christmas  business  is  about  wore  out,  anyhow. 
Ain't  it?" 

"That's  what,"  Simeon  said,  "it's  a  spendin' 
sham,  from  edge  to  edge." 


CHRISTMAS  II 

Abel  Ames  was  silent.  The  three  skirted 
the  flower  beds  and  came  out  on  the  level  sweep 
of  turf  before  the  house  that  was  no  house  in 
the  darkness,  save  that  they  remembered  how 
it  looked:  a  square,  smoked  thing,  with  a 
beard  of  dead  creepers  and  white  shades  lidded 
over  its  never-lighted  windows  —  a  fit  home 
for  this  man  least-liked  of  the  three  hundred 
neighbours  who  made  Old  Trail  Town.  He 
touched  the  elbows  of  the  other  two  men 
as  they  walked  in  the  dark,  but  he  rarely 
touched  any  human  being.  And  now  Abel 
Ames  suddenly  put  his  hand  down  on  that 
of  Ebenezer,  where  it  lay  in  the  crook  of  AbePs 
elbow. 

"What  you  got  there  ?"  he  asked. 

"Nothing  much,"  Ebenezer  answered,  irri 
tably  again.  "It's  an  old  glass.  I  was  look 
ing  over  some  rubbish,  and  I  found  it  —  over 
back.  It's  a  field  glass." 


12  CHRISTMAS 

"What  you  got  a  field  glass  out  in  the  dark 
for?"  Abel  demanded. 

"I  used  to  fool  with  it  some  when  I  was  a 
little  shaver/'  Ebenezer  said.  He  put  the  glass 
in  Abel's  hand.  "  On  the  sky/7  he  added. 

Abel  lifted  the  glass  and  turned  it  on  the 
heavens.  There,  above  the  little  side  lawn,  the 
firmament  had  unclothed  itself  of  branches  and 
lay  in  a  glorious  nakedness  to  three  horizons. 

"Thunder/'  Abel  said,  "look  at  'em  look." 

Sweeping  the  field  with  the  lens,  Abel  spoke 
meanwhile. 

"Seems  as  if  I'd  kind  of  miss  all  the  fuss 
in  the  store  around  Christmas,"  he  said, — "the 
extra  rush  and  the  trimming  up  and  all." 

"Abel'll  miss  lavishin'  his  store  with  cut 
paper,  I  guess,"  said  Simeon;  "he  dotes  on 
tassels." 

"Last  year,"  Abel  went  on,  not  lowering  the 
glass,  "I  had  a  little  kid  come  in  the  store 


CHRISTMAS  13 

Christmas  Eve,  that  I'd  never  see  before.  He 
ask'  me  if  he  could  get  warm  —  and  he  set  down 
on  the  edge  of  a  chair  by  the  stove,  and  he  took 
in  everything  in  the  place.  I  ask7  him  his  name, 
and  he  just  smiled.  I  ask7  him  if  he  was  glad  it 
was  Christmas,  and  he  says,  Was  I.  I  was  goin' 
to  give  him  some  cough  drops,  but  when  I  come 
back  from  waiting  on  somebody  he  was  gone. 
I  never  could  find  out  who  he  was,  nor  see  any 
body  that  saw  him.  I  thought  mebbe  this  Christ 
mas  he'd  come  back.  Lord,  don't  it  look  like  a 
pasture  of  buttercups  up  there  ?  Here,  Simeon." 

Simeon,  talking,  took  the  glass  and  lifted  it 
to  the  stars. 

"Cut  paper  doin's  is  all  very  well,"  he 
said,  "but  the  worst  nightmare  of  the  year 
to  the  stores  is  Christmas.  I  always  think 
it's  come  to  be  '  Peace  on  earth,  good  will  to 
men  and  extravagance  of  women.'  Quite  a 
nice  little  till  of  gold  pieces  up  there  in  the 


I4  CHRISTMAS 

sky,  ain't  there?  I'd  kind  o'  like  to  stake 
a  claim  out  up  there  —  eh  ?  Lay  it  out  along 
about  around  that  bright  one  down  there  — 
by  Josh,"  he  broke  off,  "look  at  that  bright 


one." 


Simeon  kept  looking  through  the  glass,  and 
he  leaned  a  little  forward  to  try  to  see  the 
better. 

"  What  is  it  ?  "  he  repeated,  "  what's  that  one  ? 
It's  the  biggest  star  I  ever  see  — " 

The  other  tife>  looked  where  he  was  looking, 
low  in  the  east.  But  they  saw  nothing  save 
boughs  indeterminately  moving  and  a  spatter 
of  sparkling  points  not  more  bright  than  those 
of  the  upper  field. 

"You  look,"  Simeon  bade  the  vague  presence 
that  was  his  host ;  but  through  the  glass,  Eben- 
ezer  still  saw  nothing  that  challenged  his 
sight. 

"I  don't  know  the  name  of  a  star  in  the  sky, 


CHRISTMAS  15 

except  the  dipper/7  he  grumbled,  "but  I  don't 
see  anything  out  of  the  ordinary,  anyhow." 

"It  is/7  Simeon  protested;  "I  tell  you,  it's 
the  biggest  star  I  ever  saw.  It's  blue  and  purple 
and  green  and  yellow  — " 

Abel  had  the  glass  now,  and  he  had  looked 
hardly  sooner  than  he  had  recognized. 

"Sure,"  he  said,  "I've  got  it.  It  is  blue  and 
purple  and  green  and  yellow,  and  it's  as  big 
as  most  stars  put  together.  It  twinkles  —  yes, 
sir,  and  it  swings  ..."  he  broke  off,  laughing 
at  the  mystification  of  the  others,  and  laughed 
so  that  he  could  not  go  on. 

"Is  it  a  comet,  do  you  s'pose  ?"  said  Simeon. 

"No,"  said  Abel,  "no.  It's  come  to  stay. 
It's  our  individual  private  star.  It's  the  arc 
light  in  front  of  the  Town  Hall  you  two  are 
looking  at." 

They  moved  to  where  Abel  stood,  and  from 
there,  up  the  rise  of  ground  to  the  east,  they 


1 6  CHRISTMAS 

could  see  Simeon's  star,  shining  softly  and 
throwing  long  rays,  it  seemed,  almost  to  where 
they  stood:  the  lamp  that  marked  the  heart 
of  the  village. 

"Shucks,"  said  Simeon. 

"Sold,"  said  Ebenezer. 

"Why,  I  don't  know,"  said  Abel,  "I  kind  of 
like  to  see  it  through  the  glass.  It  looks  like 
it  was  a  bigger  light  than  we  give  it  credit  for." 

"It's  a  big  enough  light,"  said  Ebenezer, 
testily.  It  was  his  own  plant  at  the  factory 
that  made  possible  the  town's  three  arc  lights, 
and  these  had  been  continued  by  him  at  the 
factory's  closing. 

"No  use  making  fun  of  your  friends'  eyesight 
because  you're  all  of  twenty  minutes  younger 
than  them,"  Simeon  grumbled.  "Come  on, 
Abel.  It  must  be  gettin'  round  the  clock." 

Abel  lingered. 

"A  man  owns  the  hull  thing  with  a  glass  o' 


CHRISTMAS  17 

this  stamp,"  he  said.  "How  much  does  one 
like  that  cost?"  he  inquired. 

"I'll  sell  you  this  one — "  began  Ebenezer; 
"wait  a  week  or  two  and  I  may  sell  you  this 
one,"  he  said.  "I  ain't  really  looked  through 
it  myself  yet." 

Not  much  after  this,  the  two  went  away  and 
left  Ebenezer  in  the  dark  yard. 

He  stood  in  the  middle  of  his  little  grass  plot 
and  looked  through  his  glass  again.  That  night 
there  was,  so  to  say,  nothing  remote  about  the 
sky,  save  its  distance.  It  had  none  of  the 
reticence  of  clouds.  It  made  you  think  of  a 
bed  of  golden  bells,  each  invisible  stalk  trying 
on  its  own  account  to  help  forward  some  Spring. 
As  he  had  said,  he  did  not  know  one  star  from 
another,  nor  a  planet  for  a  planet  with  a  name. 
It  had  been  years  since  he  had  seen  the  heavens 
so  near.  He  moved  about,  looking,  and  passed 
the  wall  of  leafless  lilacs  and  mulberries. 


1 8  CHRISTMAS 

Stars  hung  in  his  boughs  like  fruit  for  the  pluck 
ing.  They  patterned  patches  of  sky.  He  looked 
away  and  back,  and  it  was  as  if  the  stars  re 
peated  themselves,  like  the  chorus  of  everything. 

"You  beggars,"  Ebenezer  said,  "awful 
dressed  up,  ain't  you  ?  It  must  be  for  some 
thing  up  there  —  it  ain't  for  anything  down 
here,  let  me  tell  you." 

He  went  up  to  his  dark  back  door.  From 
without  there  he  could  hear  Kate  Kerr,  his 
general  servant,  who  had  sufficient  personal 
ity  to  compel  the  term  "housekeeper,"  setting 
sponge  for  bread,  with  a  slapping,  hollow  sound 
and  a  force  that  implied  a  frown  for  every  down 
stroke  of  the  iron  spoon.  He  knew  how  she 
would  turn  toward  the  door  as  he  entered,  with 
her  way  of  arching  eyebrows,  in  the  manner  of 
one  about  to  recite  the  symptoms  of  a  change 
for  the  worse  —  or  at  best  to  say  "about  the 
same"  to  everything  in  the  universe.  And 


CHRISTMAS  19 

when  Kate  Kerr  spoke,  she  always  whispered 
on  the  faintest  provocation. 

A  sudden  distaste  for  the  entire  inside  of  his 
house  seized  Ebenezer .  He  turned  and  wandered 
back  down  the  little  dark  yard,  looking  up  at 
the  high  field  of  the  stars,  with  only  his  dim  eyes. 

"There  must  be  quite  a  little  to  know  about 
them,"  he  thought,  "if  anybody  was  enough 
inter-ested." 

Then  he  remembered  Simeon  and  Abel,  and 
laughed  again  in  his  way. 

"I  done  the  town  a  good  turn  for  once,  didn't 
I  ?"  he  thought;  "I've  fixed  folks  so's  they  can't 
spend  their  money  fool!  " 

Two  steps  from  Ebenezer's  front  gate,  Simeon 
and  Abel  overtook  a  woman.  She  had  a  long 
shawl  over  her  head,  and  she  was  humming 
some  faint  air  of  her  own  making. 

"Coming  to  the  meeting,  Mary?"  Simeon 
asked  as  they  passed  her. 


20  CHRISTMAS 

"No,"  said  Mary  Chavah,  "I  started  for  it. 
But  it's  such  a  nice  night  I'm  going  to  walk 
around." 

"Things  are  going  to  go  your  way  to  that 
meeting,  I  guess,"  said  Simeon;  "ain't  you  al 
ways  found  fault  with  Christmas?" 

"They's  a  lot  o'  nonsense  about  it,"  Mary 
assented;  "I  don't  ever  bother  myself  much 
with  it.  Why?" 

"I  donno  but  we'll  all  come  round  to  your 
way  of  thinking  to-night,"  said  Simeon. 

"For  just  this  year  !"  Abel  Ames  called  back, 
as  they  went  on. 

"You  can't  do  much  else,  I  guess,"  said 
Mary.  "Everybody  dips  Christmas  up  out  of 
their  pocketbooks,  and  if  there  ain't  nothing 
there,  they  can't  dip." 

The  men  laughed  with  her,  and  went  on  down 
the  long  street  toward  the  town.  Mary  fol 
lowed  slowly,  under  the  yellowing  elms  that  made 


CHRISTMAS  21 

great  golden  shades  for  the  dim  post  Lamps. 
And  high  at  the  far  end  of  the  street  down 
which  they  went,  hung  the  blue  arc  light  before 
the  Town  Hall,  center  to  the  constellation  of  the 
home  lights  and  the  shop  lights  and  the  street 
lights,  all  near  neighbours  to  the  stream  and 
sweep  of  the  stars  hanging  a  little  higher  and 
shining  as  by  one  sun. 


Ill 

IT  was  interesting  to  see  how  they  took  the 
proposal  to  drop  that  Christmas  from  the 
calendar  there  in  Old  Trail  Town.  It  was  so 
eminently  a  sensible  thing  to  do,  and  they  all 
knew  it.  Oh,  every  way  they  looked  at  it,  it 
was  sensible,  and  they  admitted  it.  Yet,  be 
sides  Mary  Chavah  and  Ebenezer  Rule,  probably 
the  only  person  in  the  town  whose  satisfaction 
in  the  project  could  be  counted  on  to  be  un 
feigned  was  little  Tab  Winslow.  For  Tab,  as  all 
the  town  knew,  had  a  turkey  brought  up  by  his 
own  hand  to  be  the  Winslows'  Christmas  din 
ner,  but  such  had  become  Tab's  intimacy  with 
and  fondness  for  the  turkey  that  he  was  pre 
pared  to  forego  his  Christmas  if  only  that  dinner 
were  foregone,  too. 


22 


CHRISTMAS  23 

"Theophilus  Thistledown  is  such  a  human 
turkey,"  Tab  had  been  heard  explaining  pa 
tiently;  "he  knows  me  —  and  he  knows  his 
name.  He  don't  expect  us  to  eat  him  .  .  . 
why,  you  can't  eat  anything  that  knows  its 


name." 


But  every  one  else  was  just  merely  sensible. 
And  they  had  been  discussing  Christmas  in  this 
sensible  strain  at  the  town  meeting  that  night, 
before  Simeon  and  Abel  broached  their  plan 
for  standardizing  their  sensible  leanings. 

Somebody  had  said  that  Jenny  Wing,  and 
Bruce  Rule,  who  was  Ebenezer's  nephew,  were 
expected  home  for  Christmas,  and  had  added 
that  it  "didn't  look  as  if  there  would  be  much 
of  any  Christmas  down  to  the  station  to  meet 
them."  On  which  Mis'  Mortimer  Bates  had 
spoken  out,  philosophical  to  the  point  of  bru 
tality.  Mis'  Bates  was  little  and  brown  and 
quick,  and  her  clothes  seemed  always  to  curtain 


24  CHRISTMAS 

her  off,  so  that  her  figure  was  no  part  of  her 
presence. 

"I  ain't  going  to  do  a  thing  for  Christmas 
this  year,"  she  declared,  as  nearly  everybody 
in  the  village  had  intermittently  declared, 
"not  a  living,  breathing  thing.  I  can't,  and 
folks  might  just  as  well  know  it,  flat  foot. 
What's  the  use  of  buying  tinsel  and  flim 
flam  when  you're  eating  milk  gravy  to  save 
butter  and  using  salt  sacks  for  handkerchiefs  ? 
I  ain't  educated  up  to  see  it." 

Mis'  Jane  Moran,  who  had  changed  her 
chair  three  times  to  avoid  a  draught,  sat  down 
carefully  in  her  fourth  chair,  her  face  twitch 
ing  a  little  as  if  its  muscles  were  connected 
with  her  joints. 

"  Christmas  won't  be  no  different  from  any 
other  day  to  our  house  this  year,"  she  said. 
"  We'll  get  up  and  eat  our  three  meals  and  sit 
down  and  look  at  each  other.  We  can't  even 


CHRISTMAS  25 

spare  a  hen  —  she  might  lay  if  we  didn't  eat 
her." 

Mis'  Abby  Winslow,  mother  of  seven  under 
fifteen,  looked  up  from  her  rocking-chair  — 
Mis'  Winslow  always  sat  limp  in  chairs  as  if 
they  were  reaching  out  to  rest  her  and,  indeed, 
this  occasional  yielding  to  the  force  of  gravity 
was  almost  her  only  luxury. 

"You  ain't  thinking  of  the  children,  Mis' 
Bates,"  she  said,  "nor  you  either,  Jane  Moran, 
or  you  couldn't  talk  that  way.  We  can't 
have  no  real  Christmas,  of  course.  But  I'd 
planned  some  little  things  made  out  of  what  I 
had  in  the  house  :  things  that  wouldn't  be  any 
thing,  and  yet  would  seem  a  little  something." 

Mis'  Mortimer  Bates  swept  round  at  her. 

"Children,"  she  said,  "ought  to  be  showed 
how  to  do  without  things.  Bennet  and  Gussie 
ain't  expecting  a  sliver  of  nothing  for  Christ 
mas  —  not  a  sliver." 


26  CHRISTMAS 

Mis'  Winslow  unexpectedly  flared  up. 

"Whether  it  shows  through  on  the  outside 
or  not,"  she  said,  "I'll  bet  you  they  are." 

"My  three,"  Mis'  Emerson  Morse  put  in 
pacifically,  "  have  been  kept  from  popping 
corn  and  cracking  nuts  all  Fall  so's  they  could 
do  both  Christmas  night,  and  it  would  seem 
like  something  that  was  something." 

"That  ain't  the  idea,"  Mis'  Bates  insisted; 
"I  want  them  learnt  to  do  without — : 
("They'll  learn  that,"  Mis'  Abby  Winslow 
said;  "they'll  learn  .  .  .")  "Happening  as 
it  does  to  most  every  one  of  us  not  to  have 
no  Christmas,  they  won't  be  no  distinctions 
drawn.  None  of  the  children  can  brag  — 
and  children  is  limbs  of  Satan  for  bragging," 
she  added.  (She  was  remembering  a  brief  con 
versation  overheard  that  day  between  Gussie 
and  Pep,  the  minister's  son  :  — 

"I've  got  a  doll,"  said  Gussie. 


CHRISTMAS  27 

"I've  got  a  dollar,"  said  Pep. 

"My  mamma  went  to  a  tea  party,"  said 
Gussie. 

"My  mamma  give  one,"  said  Pep. 

Gussie  mustered  her  forces.  "My  papa 
goes  to  work  every  morning,"  she  topped  it. 

"My  papa  don't  have  to,"  said  Pep,  and 
closed  the  incident.) 

"  I  can't  help  who's  a  limb  of  Satan,"  Mis' 
Winslow  replied  doggedly,  "I  can't  seem  to 
sense  Christmas  time  without  Christmas." 

"It  won't  be  Christmas  time  if  you  don't 
have  any  Christmas,"  Mis'  Bates  persisted. 

"Oh,  yes  it  will,"  Mis'  Winslow  said.  "Oh, 
yes,  it  will.  You  can't  stop  that." 

It  was  Mis'  Bates,  who,  from  the  high- 
backed  plush  rocker,  rapped  with  the  blue 
glass  paperweight  on  the  red  glass  lamp  and, 
in  the  absence  of  Mr.  Bates,  called  the  meeting 
to  order.  The  Old  Trail  Town  Society  was 


28  CHRISTMAS 

organized  on  a  platform  of  "membership  un 
limited,  dues  nothing  but  taking  turns  with  the 
entertaining,  officers  to  consist  of:  President, 
the  host  of  the  evening  (or  wife,  if  any),  and  no 
minutes  to  bother  with."  And  it  was  to  a  meet 
ing  so  disposed  on  the  subject  of  Christmas  that 
Simeon  Buck  rose  to  present  his  argument. 

"Mr.  President,"  he  addressed  the  chair. 

"It's  Madam  President,  you  ninny  geese," 
corrected  Buff  Miles,  sotto  wee. 

"It  had  ought  to  be  Madam  Chairman," 
objected  Mis'  Moran;  "she  ain't  the  contin 
uous  president." 

"Well,  for  the  land  sakes,  call  me  Mis'  Bates, 
formal,  and  go  ahead,"  said  the  lady  under  dis 
cussion.  "Only  I  bet  you've  forgot  now  what 
you  was  going  to  say." 

"Not  much  - 1  did  not"  Simeon  Buck  con 
tinued  composedly,  and,  ignoring  the  inter 
ruptions,  let  his  own  vocative  stand.  Then  he 


CHRISTMAS  29 

presented  a  memorandum  of  a  sum  of  money. 
It  was  not  a  large  sum.  But  when  he  quoted 
it,  everybody  looked  at  everybody  else,  stricken. 
For  it  was  a  sum  large  enough  to  have  required, 
in  the  earning,  months  of  work  on  the  part  of 
an  appalling  proportion  of  Old  Trail  Town. 

"From  the  day  after  Thanksgiving  to  the 
night  before  Christmas  last  year,"  said  Simeon, 
"that  is  the  amount  that  the  three  hundred 
souls  —  no,  I  guess  it  must  have  been  bodies 
—  in  our  town  spent  in  the  local  stores.  Now, 
bare  living  expenses  aside,  —  which  ain't  very 
much  for  us  all,  these  days,  —  this  amount  may 
be  assumed  to  have  been  spent  by  the  lot  of 
us  for  Christmas.  Of  course  there  was  those," 
continued  Mr.  Buck,  looking  intelligently 
about  him,  "who  bought  most  of  their  Christ 
mas  stuff  in  the  City.  But  these  —  these 
economic  traitors  only  make  the  point  of  what 
I  say  the  more  so.  Without  them,  the  town 


3o  CHRISTMAS 

spent  this  truly  amazing  sum  in  keeping  the 
holidays.  Now,  I  ask  you,  frank,  could  the 
town  afford  that,  or  anything  like  that?" 

Buff  Miles  spoke  out  of  the  extremity  of  his 
reflections. 

"That's  a  funny  crack,"  he  said,  "for  a  mer 
chant  to  make.  Why  not  leave  'em  spend  and 
leave  'em  pay?" 

"Oh,  I'll  leave  'em  pay  aU  right,"  rejoined 
Simeon,  significantly,  and  stood  silent  and  smil 
ing  until  there  were  those  in  the  room  who 
uncomfortably  shifted. 

Then  he  told  them  the  word  he  bore  from 
Ebenezer  Rule  that  as  they  had  feared  and 
half  expected,  the  factory  was  not  to  open  that 
Winter  at  all.  Hardly  a  family  represented  in 
the  rooms  was  not  also  representative  of  a  fac 
tory  employee,"  now  idle  these  seven  months, 
as  they  were  periodically  idle  at  the  times  of 
"enforced"  suspension  of  the  work. 


CHRISTMAS  31 

"What  I'm  getting  at  is  this/7  Simeon 
summed  it  up,  "and  Abel  Ames,  here,  backs 
me  up — don't  you,  Abel  ? —  that  hadn't  we  all 
ought  to  come  to  some  joint  conclusion  about 
our  Christmas  this  year,  and  roust  the  town  up 
to  it,  like  a  town,  and  not  go  it  blind  and  either 
get  in  up  to  our  necks  in  debt,  same  as  City 
folks,  or  else  quit  off  Christmas,  individual, 
and  mebbe  hurt  folks's  feelings?  Why  not 
move  intelligent,  like  a  town,  and  all  agree 
out-and-out  to  leave  Christmas  go  by  this 
year  ?  And  have  it  understood,  thorough  ?  " 

It  was  very  still  in  the  little  rooms  when  he 
had  finished.  There  seems  to  be  no  established 
etiquette  of  revolutions.  But  something  of  the 
unconsciousness  of  the  enthusiast  was  upon 
Mis'  Mortimer  Bates,  and  she  spoke  before 
she  knew :  — 

"So's  we  can  be  sure  everybody  else'll  know 
it  and  not  give  something  either  and  be  dis- 


32  CHRISTMAS 

appointed  too,"  she  assented.  "Well,  I  bet 
everybody'd  be  real  relieved." 

"The  churches  has  sanctioned  us  doing  away 
with  Christmas  this  year  by  doing  away  with 
it  themselves,"  observed  Mis'  Jane  Moran. 
"That'd  ought  to  be  enough  to  go  by." 

"It  don't  seem  to  me  Christmas  is  a  thing 
for  the  churches  to  decide  about,"  said  Simeon, 
thoughtfully.  "It  seems  to  me  the  matter  is 
up  to  the  merchants  and  the  grocers  and  the 
family  providers.  We're  the  ones  most  con 
cerned.  Us  providers  have  got  to  scratch 
gravel  to  get  together  any  Christmas  at  all,  if 
any.  And  speaking  for  us  merchants,  I  may 
say,  we'll  lay  in  the  stock  if  folks'll  buy  it.  But 
if  they  can't  afford  to  pay  for  it,  we  don't 
want  the  stock  personally." 

"I  guess  we've  all  had  the  experience," 
observed  Mis'  Jane  Moran,  "of  announcing 
we  wasn't  going  to  give  any  gifts  this  year, 


CHRISTMAS  33 

and  then  had  somebody  send  something  em 
broidered  by  hand,  with  a  solid  month's  work 
on  it.  But  if  we  all  agree  to  secede  from 
Christmas,  we  can  lay  down  the  law  to  folks 
so's  it'll  be  understood:  No  Christmas  for 
nobody" 

"Not  to  children  ?"  said  Mis'  Abby  Winslow, 
doubtfully. 

"My  idea  is  to  teach  'em  to  do  entirely  with 
out  Christmas,"  harped  Mis'  Bates.  "We 
can't  afford  one.  Why  not  let  the  children 
share  in  the  family  privation  without  trying 
to  fool  'em  with  make-shift  presents  and 
boiled  sugar?" 

Over  in  a  corner  near  the  window  plants, 
whose  dead  leaves  she  had  been  picking  off, 
sat  Ellen  Bourne  —  Mis'  Matthew  Bourne  she 
was,  but  nearly  everybody  called  her  Ellen 
Bourne.  There  is  some  law  about  these  things : 
why  instinctively  we  call  some  folk  by  the 


34  CHRISTMAS 

whole  name,  some  by  their  first  names,  some 
by  the  last,  some  by  shortening  the  name, 
some  by  a  name  not  their  own.  Perhaps  there 
is  a  name  for  each  of  us,  if  only  we  knew  where 
to  look,  and  folk  intuitively  select  the  one  most 
like  that.  Perhaps  some  of  us,  by  the  sort 
of  miracle  that  is  growing  every  day,  got  the 
name  that  is  meant  for  us.  Perhaps  some  of 
us  struggle  along  with  consonants  that  spell 
somebody  else.  And  how  did  some  names 
get  themselves  so  terrifically  overused  unless 
by  some  strange  might,  say,  a  kind  of  astro 
logical  irregularity  .  .  .  Ellen  Bourne  sat  by 
the  window  and  suddenly  looked  over  her 
shoulder  at  the  room. 

"If  we've  got  the  things  made,"  she  said, 
"  can't  we  give  'em  ?  If  it's  to  children  ?  " 

"I  think  if  we're  going  to  omit,  we'd  ought 
to  omit,"  Mis  Bates  held  her  own;  "it  can't 
matter  to  you,  Ellen,  with  no  children,  so  ..." 


CHRISTMAS  35 

She  caught  herself  sharply  up.  Ellen's  little 
boy  had  died  a  Christmas  or  two  ago. 

"No,"  Ellen  said,  "I  ain't  any  children,  of 
course.  But  — " 

"WeH,  I  think,"  said  Mis'  Jane  Moran, 
"that  we've  hit  on  the  only  way  we  could 
have  hit  on  to  chirk  each  other  up  over  a  hard 
time." 

"And  get  off  delicate  ourselves  same  time," 
said  Buff  Miles.  From  the  first  Buff  had  been 
advocating  what  he  called  "an  open  Christ 
mas,"  and  there  were  those  near  him  at  the 
meeting  to  whom  he  had  confided  some  plan 
about  "church  choir  Christmas  carol  seren 
ades,"  which  he  was  loath  to  see  set  at  naught. 

Not  much  afterward  Simeon  Buck  put  the 
motion :  — 

"Mis'  Chairman,"  he  said,  "I  move  you  — 
and  aU  of  us  —  that  the  Old  Trail  Town  meet 
ing  do  and  hereby  does  declare  itself  in  favour 


36  CHRISTMAS 

of  striking  Christmas  celebrations  from  its 
calendar  this  year.  And  that  we  circulate  a 
petition  through  the  town  to  this  effect,  headed 
by  our  names.  And  that  we  all  own  up  that 
it's  for  the  simple  and  regretful  reason  that 
not  a  mother's  son  of  us  can  afford  to  buy 
Christmas  presents  this  year,  and  what's  the 
use  of  scratching  to  keep  up  appearances  ?" 

For  a  breath  Abel  Ames  hesitated;  then  he 
spoke  voluntarily  for  the  first  time  that  evening. 

"Mr.  President,  I  second  the  hull  of  that," 
said  he,  slowly,  and  without  looking  at  any 
body  ;  and  then  sighed  his  vast,  triple  sigh. 

There  was  apparently  nobody  to  vote  against 
the  motion.  Mis'  Winslow  did  not  vote  at  all. 
Ellen  Bourne  said  "No,"  but  she  said  it  so 
faintly  that  nobody  heard  save  those  nearest 
her,  and  they  felt  a  bit  embarrassed  for  her 
because  she  had  spoken  alone,  and  they  tried 
to  cover  up  the  minute. 


CHRISTMAS  37 

"Carried,"  said  the  Chair,  and  slipped  out 
in  the  kitchen  to  put  on  the  coffee. 

At  the  meeting  there  was  almost  nobody  who, 
in  the  course  of  the  evening,  did  not  make  or 
reply  to  some  form  of  observation  on  one 
theme.  It  was :  — 

"Well,  I  wish  Mary  Chavah'd  been  to  the 
meeting.  She'd  have  enjoyed  herself." 

Or,  "Well,  won't  Mary  Chavah  be  glad 
of  this  plan  they've  got?  She's  wanted  it  a 
good  while." 

Or,  "We  all  seem  to  have  come  to  Mary 
Chavah's  way  of  thinking,  don't  we?  You 
know,  she  ain't  kept  any  Christmas  for  years." 

Unless  it  was  Abel  Ames.  He,  in  fact,  made 
or  replied  to  almost  no  observations  that  even 
ing.  He  drank  his  coffee  without  cream,  sugar, 
or  spoon,  —  they  are  always  overlooking  some 
body's  essentials  in  this  way,  and  such  is  Old 
Trail  Town's  shy  courtesy  that  the  omission  is 


38  CHRISTMAS 

never  mentioned  or  repaired  by  the  victim,  — 
and  sighed  his  triple  sigh  at  intervals,  and  went 
home. 

"Hetty,"  he  said  to  his  wife,  who  had  not 
gone  to  the  meeting,  "they  put  it  through. 
We  won't  have  no  Christmas  creditors  this 
year.  We  don't  have  to  furnish  charged 
Christmas  presents  for  nobody." 

She  looked  up  from  the  towel  she  was 
featherstitching  —  she  was  a  little  woman 
who  carried  her  head  back  and  had  large  eyes 
and  the  long,  curved  lashes  of  a  child. 

"I  s'pose  you're  real  relieved,  ain't  you, 
Abel?"  she  answered. 

"My,  yes,"  said  Abel,  without  expression. 
"My,  yes." 

They  all  took  the  news  home  in  different  wise. 

"Matthew,"  said  EUen  Bourne,  "the  town 

meeting  voted  not  to  have  any  Christmas  this 


CHRISTMAS  39 

year.  That  is,  to  ask  the  folks  not  to  have  any 
—  'count  of  expense." 

"Sensible  move,"  said  Matthew,  sharpening 
his  ax  by  the  kitchen  stove. 

"  It'll  be  a  relief  for  most  folks  not  to  have  the 
muss  and  the  clutter,"  said  Ellen's  mother. 

"Hey,  king  and  country!"  said  Ellen's  old 
father,  whittling  a  stick,  "I  ain't  done  no 
more'n  look  on  at  a  Christmas  for  ten  years 
and  more  —  with  no  children  around  so." 

"I  know,"  said  Ellen  Bourne,  "  I  know.  .  .  ." 

The  announcement  was  greeted  by  Mor 
timer  Bates  with  a  slap  of  the  knee. 

"Good-by,  folderol!"  he  said.  "We  need 
a  sane  Christmas  in  the  world  a  good  sight 
more'n  we  need  a  sane  Fourth,  most  places. 
Good  work." 

But  Bennet  and  Gussie  Bates  burst  into 
wails. 

"Hush!"    said    Mis'    Bates,  peremptorily. 


40  CHRISTMAS 

"You  ain't  the  only  ones,  remember.  It's 
no  Christmas  for  nobody!" 

"I  thought  the  rest  of  'em  would  have  one 
an'  we  could  go  over  to  theirs  ..."  sobbed 
Gussie. 

"I'd  rather  p'etend  it's  Christmas  in  other 
houses  even  if  we  ain't  it !"  mourned  Bennet. 

"Be  my  little  man  and  woman,"  admonished 
Mis'  Mortimer  Bates. 

At  the  Morans,  little  Emily  Moran  made  an 
unexpected  deduction :  — 

"I  won't  stay  in  bed  all  day  Christmas  !"  she 
gave  out. 

"Stay  in  bed  !"  echoed  Mis'  Moran.  "Why 
on  this  earth  should  you  stay  in  bed  ?  " 

"Well,  if  we  get  up,  then  it's  Christmas  and 
you  can't  stop  it !"  little  Emily  triumphed. 

When  they  told  Pep,  the  minister's  son,  after 
a  long  preparation  by  story  and  other  gradual 
approach,  and  a  Socratic  questioning  cleverly 


CHRISTMAS  41 

winning  damning  admissions  from  Pep,  he 
looked  up  in  his  father's  face  thoughtfully :  — 

"If  they  ain't  no  Christ's  birthday  this  year, 
is  it  a  lie  that  Christ  was  born  ?"  he  demanded. 

And  secretly  the  children  took  counsel  with 
one  another :  Would  Buff  Miles,  the  church  choir 
tenor,  take  them  out  after  dark  on  Christmas 
Eve,  to  sing  church  choir  serenades  at  folks' 
gates,  or  would  he  not  ?  And  when  they  thought 
that  he  might  not,  because  this  would  be  con 
sidered  Christmas  celebration  and  would  only 
make  the  absence  of  present-giving  the  more 
conspicuous,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Sunday 
schools  themselves,  they  faced  still  another 
theological  quandary:  For  if  it  was  true  that 
Christ  was  born,  then  Christmas  was  his 
birthday;  and  if  Christmas  was  his  birth 
day,  wasn't  it  wicked  not  to  pay  any  attention  ? 

Alone  of  them  all,  little  Tab  Winslow  re 
joiced.  His  brothers  and  sisters  made  the  time 


42  CHRISTMAS 

tearful  with  questionings  as  to  the  effect  on 
Santa  Glaus,  and  how  would  they  get  word  to 
him,  and  would  it  be  Christmas  in  the  City, 
and  why  couldn't  they  move  there,  and  other 
matters  denoting  the  reversal  of  this  their 
earth.  But  Tab  slipped  out  the  kitchen  door, 
to  the  corner  of  the  barn,  where  the  great 
turkey  gobbler  who  had  been  named  held 
his  empire  trustingly. 

"Oh,  Theophilus  Thistledown,"  said  Tab 
to  him,  "you're  the  only  one  in  this  town 
that's  goin'  to  have  a  Christmas.  You  ain't 
got  to  be  et." 


IV 

THE  placard  was  tacked  to  the  Old  Trail 
Town  post-office  wall,  between  a  summons  to 
join  the  Army  and  the  Navy  of  the  United 
States,  and  the  reward  offered  for  an  es 
caped  convict  —  all  three  manifestoes  register 
ing  something  of  the  stage  of  society's  develop 
ment. 

NOTICE 

Owing  to  the  local  business  depression  and 
to  the  current  private  decisions  to  get  up  very 
few  home  Christmas  celebrations  this  year,  and 
also  to  the  vote  of  the  various  lodges,  churches, 
Sunday  schools,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.,  to  forego  the  usual 
Christmas  tree  observances,  the  merchants  of 
this  town  have  one  and  all  united  with  most  of 
the  folks  to  petition  the  rest  to  omit  all  Christ 
mas  presents,  believing  that  the  Christmas 

43< 


44  CHRISTMAS 

spirit  will  be  kept  up  best  by  all  agreeing  to  act 
alike.  All  that's  willing  may  announce  it  by 
signing  below  and  notifying  others. 

THE  COMMITTEE. 


There  were  only  three  hundred  folk  living  in 
Old  Trail  Town.  Already  two  thirds  of  their 
signatures  were  scrawled  on  the  sheets  of 
foolscap  tacked  beneath  the  notice. 

On  the  day  after  her  return  home,  Jenny 
Wing  stood  and  stared  at  the  notice.  Her 
mother  had  written  to  her  of  the  town's  talk, 
but  the  placard  made  it  seem  worse. 

"I'll  go  in  on  the  way  home  and  see  what 
Mary  says,"  she  thought,  and  asked  for  the 
letter  that  lay  in  Mary  Chavah's  box,  next  her 
own.  They  gave  her  the  letter  without  ques 
tion.  All  Old  Trail  Town  asks  for  its  neigh 
bour's  mail  and  reads  its  neighbour's  postmarks 
and  gets  to  know  the  different  Writings  and  to 


CHRISTMAS  45 

inquire  after  them,  like  persons.  ("He  ain't 
got  so  much  of  a  curl  to  his  M  to-day,"  one  will 
say  of  a  superscription.  "  Better  write  right 
back  and  chirk  'im  up."  Or,  " Here's  Her  that 
don't  seal  her  letters  good.  Tell  her  about 
that,  why  don't  you?"  Or,  "This  Writing's 
a  stranger  to  me.  I'll  just  wait  a  minute 
to  see  if  birth  or  death  gets  out  of  the  enve 
lope.") 

As  she  closed  Mary's  gate  and  hurried  up 
the  walk,  in  a  keen  wind  flowing  with  little 
pricking  flakes,  Jenny  was  startled  to  see  both 
parlour  windows  open.  The  white  muslin  cur 
tains  were  blowing  idly  as  if  June  were  in  the 
air.  Turning  as  a  matter  of  course  to  the  path 
that  led  to  the  kitchen,  she  was  hailed  by  Mary, 
who  came  out  the  front  door  with  a  rug  in  her 
hands. 

"Step  right  in  this  way,"  said  Mary;  "this 
door's  unfastened." 


46  CHRISTMAS 

" Forevermore  ! "  Jenny  said,  "Mary  Cha- 
vah  !  What  you  got  your  house  all  open  for  ? 
You  ain't  moving  ?" 

A  gust  of  wind  took  Mary's  answer.  She 
tossed  the  rug  across  the  icy  railing  of  the  porch 
and  beckoned  Jenny  into  the  house,  and  into 
the  parlour.  And  when  she  had  greeted  Jenny 
after  the  months  of  her  absence :  — 

"See,"  Mary  said  exultantly,  "don't  it  look 
grand  and  empty?  Look  at  it  first,  and  then 
come  on  in  and  I'll  tell  you  about  it." 

The  white-papered  walls  of  the  two  rooms 
were  bare  of  pictures ;  the  floor  had  been  spar 
ingly  laid  with  rugs.  The  walnut  sofa  and 
chairs,  the  table  for  the  lamp,  and  the  long 
shelves  of  her  grandfather's  books  —  these 
were  all  that  the  room  held.  A  white  arch 
divided  the  two  chambers,  like  a  benign  brow 
whose  face  had  long  been  dimmed  away.  It 
was  all,  exquisitely  clean  and  icy  cold.  A  little 


CHRISTMAS  47 

snow  drifted  in  through  the  muslin  curtains. 
The  breath  of  the  two  women  showed. 

"What  on  earth  you  done  that  for?"  Jenny 
demanded. 

Mary  Chavah  stood  in  the  empty  archway, 
the  satisfaction  on  her  face  not  veiling  its  pure 
austerity.  She  was  not  much  past  thirty- 
three,  but  she  looked  older,  for  she  was  gaunt. 
Her  flesh  had  lost  its  firmness,  her  dress 
making  had  stooped  her,  her  strong  frame 
moved  as  if  it  habitually  shouldered  its  way. 
In  her  broad  forehead  and  deep  eyes  and 
somewhat  in  her  silent  mouth,  you  read  the 
woman  —  the  rest  of  her  was  obscured  in  her 
gentle  reticence.  She  had  a  gray  shawl,  blue- 
bordered,  folded  tightly  about  her  head  and 
pinned  under  her  chin,  and  it  wrapped  her 
to  her  feet. 

"I  feel  like  a  thing  in  a  new  shell,"  she  said. 
"  Come  on  in  where  it's  warm." 


48  CHRISTMAS 

Instead  of  moving  her  dining-room  table  to 
her  kitchen,  as  most  of  Old  Trail  Town  did  in 
Winter,  Mary  had  moved  her  cooking  stove  into 
the  dining  room,  had  improvised  a  calico-cur 
tained  cupboard  for  the  utensils,  and  there  she 
lived  and  sewed.  The  windows  were  bare. 

"  I'll  let  the  parlour  have  curtains  if  it  wants 
to,"  she  had  said,  "but  in  the  room  I  live  in  I 
want  every  strip  of  the  sun  I  can  get." 

There  were  no  plants,  though  every  house 
in  Old  Trail  Town  had  a  window  of  green,  and 
slips  without  number  were  offered.  .  .  . 

"  .  .  .  You  can  have  flowers  all  you  want," 
she  said  once;  "I  like  'em  too  well  to  box  'em 
up  in  the  house." 

And  there  were  no  books. 

"I  don't  read,"  she  admitted;  "I  ain't  ever 
read  a  book  in  my  life  but  "Pilgrim's  Prog 
ress"  and  the  first  four  chapters  of  "Ben  Hur." 
What's  the  use  of  pretending,  when  books  is 


CHRISTMAS  49 

such  a  nuisance  to  dust  ?  Grandfather's  books 
in  the  parlour  —  oh,  they  ain't  books.  They're 
furniture." 

But  she  had  a  little  bookcase  whose  shelves 
were  filled  with  her  patterns  —  in  her  dress 
making  she  never  used  a  fashion  plate. 

"I  like  to  make  'em  up  and  cut  'em  out," 
she  sometimes  told  her  friends.  "I  don't  care 
nothing  whatever  about  the  dresses  when  they 
get  done  —  more  fool  the  women  for  ornament 
ing  themselves  up  like  lamp  shades,  I  always 
think.  But  I  just  do  love  to  fuss  with  the 
paper  and  make  it  do  like  I  say.  Land,  I've 
got  my  cupboard  full  of  more  patterns  than 
I'd  ever  get  orders  for  if  I  lived  to  be  born 
again." 

She  sat  down  before  the  cooking  stove  and 
drew  off  her  woolen  mittens.  She  folded  a 
hand  on  her  cheek,  forcing  the  cheek  out  of 
drawing  by  her  hand's  pressure.  There  was 


50  CHRISTMAS 

always  about  her  gestures  a  curious  nakedness 
—  indeed,  about  her  face  and  hands.  They 
were  naive,  perfectly  likely  to  reveal  them 
selves  in  their  current  awkwardness  and  ugli 
ness  of  momentary  expression  which,  by  its 
very  frankness,  made  a  new  law  as  it  broke  an 
old  one. 

"Don't  you  tell  folks  I've  been  house  clean 
ing,"  she  warned  Jenny.  "The  town  would 
think  I  was  crazy,  with  the  thermometer  act 
ing  up  zero  so.  Anyway,  I  ain't  been  house 
cleaning.  I  just  simply  got  so  sick  to  death  of 
all  the  truck  piled  up  in  this  house  that  I  had 
to  get  away  from  it.  And  this  morning  it 
looked  so  clean  and  white  and  smooth  out 
doors  that  I  felt  so  cluttered  up  I  couldn't  sew. 
I  begun  on  this  room  —  and  then  I  kept  on 
with  the  parlour.  I've  took  out  the  lambre 
quins  and  'leven  pictures  and  the  what-not 
and  four  moth-catching  rugs  and  four  sofa 


CHRISTMAS  51 

pillows,  and  I've  packed  the  whole  lot  of  'em 
into  the  attic.  I've  done  the  same  to  my  bed 
room.  I've  emptied  my  house  out  of  all  the 
stuff  the  folks'  and  the  folks'  folks  and  their 
folks  —  clear  back  to  Grandmother  Hackett 
had  in  here  —  I  mean  the  truck  part.  Not 
the  good.  And  I  guess  now  I've  got  some  room 
to  live  in." 

Jenny  looked  at  her  admiringly,  and  asked : 
"How  did  you  ever  do  it?  I  can't  bear  to 
throw  things  away.  I  can't  bear  to  move 
things  from  where  they've  been." 

"I  didn't  use  to  want  to,"  said  Mary,  "but 
lately  —  I  do.  The  Winter's  so  clean,  you  kind 
of  have  to,  to  keep  up.  What's  the  news  ?" 

"Here's  a  letter,"  Jenny  said,  and  handed  it. 
"I  didn't  look  to  see  who  it's  from.  I  guess 
it's  a  strange  Writing,  anyway." 

Mary  glanced  indifferently  at  it.  "It's  from 
Lily's  boy,  out  West,"  she  said,  and  laid  the 


52  CHRISTMAS 

letter  on  the  shelf.  "I  meant,  what's  the  news 
about  you?" 

Jenny's  eyes  widened  swiftly.  "News 
about  me?"  she  said.  "Who  said  there  was 
any  news  about  me?" 

"Nobody,"  Mary  said  evenly;  "but  you've 
been  gone  most  a  year,  ain't  you  ?" 

"Oh,"  Jenny  said,  "yes.  .  ." 

For  really,  when  Old  Trail  Town  stopped  to 
think  of  it,  Jenny  Wing  was  Mrs.  Bruce  Rule, 
and  had  been  so  for  a  year.  But  no  one  thought 
of  calling  her  that.  It  always  takes  Old  Trail 
Town  several  years  to  adopt  its  marriages. 
They  would  graduate  first  to  "Jenny  Wing 
that  was,"  and  then  to  "Jenny  Wing  What's- 
name,"  and  then  to  "Mis'  Rule  that  was 
Jenny  Wing.  ..." 

"...  You  tell  me  some  news,"  Jenny 
added.  "Mother  don't  ever  write  much  but 
the  necessaries." 


CHRISTMAS  53 

"That's  all  there's  been/7  Mary  Chavah 
told  her;  "we  ain't  had  no  luxuries  for  news 
in  forever." 

"But  there's  that  notice  in  the  post  office," 
cried  Jenny.  "I  come  home  to  spend  Christ 
mas,  and  there's  that  notice  in  the  post  office. 
Mother  wrote  nobody  was  going  to  do  anything 
for  Christmas,  but  she  never  wrote  me  that. 
I've  brought  home  some  little  things  I 
made  — " 

"  Oh  —  Christmas  ! "  Mary  said.  "  Yes,  they 
all  got  together  and  concluded  best  not  have 
any.  You  know,  since  the  failure  — " 

Mary  hesitated  —  Ebenezer  Rule  was  Bruce 
Rule's  uncle. 

"I  know,"  said  Jenny,  "it's  Uncle  Ebenezer. 
I  don't  know  how  I'm  going  to  tell  Bruce  when 
he  comes.  To  think  it's  in  our  family,  the 
reason  they  can't  have  any  Christmas.  ..." 

"Nonsense,"  said  Mary,  briskly;  "no  Christ- 


54  CHRISTMAS 

mas  presents  is  real  sensible,  my  way  of  thinking. 
It's  been  'leven  years  since  I've  given  a  Christ 
mas  present  to  anybody.  The  first  Christmas 
after  mother  died,  I  couldn't  —  I  just  couldn't. 
That  kind  of  got  me  out  of  the  i-dea,  and  then 
I  see  all  the  nonsense  of  it." 

"The  nonsense?"  Jenny  repeated. 

"If  you  don't  like  folks,  you  don't  want  to 
give  nothing  to  them  or  take  nothing  from  them. 
And  if  you  do  like  'em  you  don't  want  to  have 
to  wait  to  Christmas  to  give  'em  things.  Ain't 
that  so?"  Mary  Chavah  put  it. 

"No,"  said  Jenny;  "it  ain't.  Not  a  bit  so." 
And  when  Mary  laughed,  questioned  her, 
pressed  her,  "It  seems  perfectly  awful  to  me 
not  to  have  a  Christmas,"  Jenny  could  say 
only,  "I  feel  like  the  Winter  didn't  have  no 
backbone  to  it." 

"It's  a  dead  time,  Winter,"  Mary  assented. 
"What's  the  use  of  tricking  it  up  with  gewgaws 


CHRISTMAS  55 

and  pretending  it's  a  live  time  ?  Besides,  if  you 
ain't  got  the  money,  you  ain't  got  the  money. 
And  nobody  has,  this  year.  Unless  they 
go  ahead  and  buy  things  anyway,  like  the 
City." 

Jenny  shook  her  head.  "  I  got  seven  Christ 
mas-present  relatives  and  ten  Christmas-pres 
ent  friends,  and  I've  only  spent  Two  Dollars 
and  Eighty  cents  on  'em  all,"  she  said,  "for 
material.  But  I've  made  little  things  for 
every  one  of  'em.  It  don't  seem  as  if  that 
much  had  ought  to  hurt  any  one. 

Jenny  looked  past  her  out  the  window,  some 
where  beyond  the  snow. 

"They's  something  else,"  she  added,  "it 
ain't  all  present  giving.  ..." 

"Nonsense,"  said  Mary  Chavah,  "take 
the  present  trading  away  from  Christmas  and 
see  how  long  it'd  last.  I  was  in  the  City  once 
for  Christmas.  I'll  never  forget  it  —  never. 


56  CHRISTMAS 

I  never  see  folks  work  like  the  folks  worked 
there.  The  streets  was  Bedlam.  The  stores 
was  worse.  'What'll  I  get  him?  .  .  .'  Tve 
just  got  to  get  something  for  her.  .  .  .'  'It 
don't  seem  as  if  this  is  nice  enough  after  what 
she  give  me  last  year.  .  .  . '  I  can  hear  'em 
yet.  They  spent  money  wicked.  And  I  said 
to  myself  that  I  was  glad  from  my  head  to  my 
feet  that  I  was  done  with  Christmas.  And  I 
been  preaching  it  ever  since.  And  I'm  pleased 
this  town  has  had  to  come  to  it." 

"It  ain't  the  way  I  feel,"  said  Jenny.  She 
got  up  and  wandered  to  the  window  and  hardly 
heard  while  Mary  went  on  with  more  of  the 
sort.  "It  seems  kind  of  like  going  back  on 
the  ways  things  are,"  Jenny  said,  as  she 
turned.  Then,  as  she  made  ready  to  go,  she 
broke  off  and  smote  her  hands  together. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "it  don't  seem  as  if  I  could 
bear  it  not  to  have  Christmas  —  not  this  year." 


CHRISTMAS  57 

"You  mean  your  and  Bruce's  first  Christ 
mas,"  said  Mary.  "Mark  my  words,  he'll  be 
glad  to  be  rid  of  the  fuss.  Men  always  are. 
Come  on  out  the  front  door  if  you're  going," 
said  Mary.  "You  might  as  well  use  it  when 
it's  open." 

As  Jenny  passed  the  open  parlour  door,  she 
looked  in  again  at  the  bare  room. 

"Don't  you  like  pictures?"  she  asked 
abruptly. 

"I  like  'em  when  I  like  'em,"  Mary  answered. 
"I  didn't  like  them  I  had  up  here  —  I  had  a 
shot  stag  and  a  fruit  piece  and  an  eagle  with  a 
child  in  its  claws.  I've  loathed  'em  for  years, 
but  I  ain't  ever  had  the  heart  to  throw  'em  out 
till  now.  They're  over  behind  the  coal  bin." 

Jenny  thought.  "They's  a  picture  over  to 
mother's,"  she  said,  "that  she  ain't  put  up 
because  she  ain't  had  the  money  to  frame  it. 
I  guess  I'll  bring  it  over  after  supper  and  see  if 


58  CHRISTMAS 

you  don't  want  it  up  here  —  frame  or  no  frame. " 
She  looked  at  Mary  and  laughed.  "If  I  bring 
it  to  you  to-night,"  she  said,  "it  ain't  a  Christ 
mas  present  —  legal.  But  if  I  want  to  call  it 
a  Christmas  present  inside  me,  the  town  can't 
help  that." 

"What's  the  picture?"  Mary  asked. 

"I  don't  know  who  it  represents,"  said  Jenny, 
"but  it's  nice." 

When  Jenny  had  gone,  Mary  Chavah  stood 
in  the  snow  shaking  the  rug  she  had  left  out 
side,  and  looking  at  the  clean,  white  town. 

"It  looks  like  it  was  waiting  for  something," 
she  thought. 

A  door  opened  and  shut.  A  child  shouted. 
In  the  north  east  a  shining  body  had  come 
sparkling  above  the  trees  —  Capella  of  the 
brightness  of  one  hundred  of  our  suns,  being 
born  into  the  twilight  like  a  little  star.  .  .  . 

Mary  closed  the  parlour  windows  and  stood 


CHRISTMAS  59 

for  a  moment  immersed  in  the  quiet  and  empti 
ness  of  the  clean  rooms. 

"This  looks  like  it  was  waiting  for  some 
thing,  too,"  she  thought.  "But  it  ought  to 
know  it  won't  get  it,"  she  added  whimsically. 

Then  she  went  back  to  the  warm  room  and 
saw  the  letter  on  the  shelf.  She  meant  to  go 
in  a  moment  to  the  stable  to  make  it  safe  there 
for  the  night;  so,  with  the  gray  shawl  still 
binding  her  head  and  falling  to  her  feet,  she 
sat  by  the  stove  and  read  the  letter. 


"...  because  she  wasn't  sick  but  two  days 
and  we  never  thought  of  her  dying  till  she  was 
dead.  Otherwise  we'd  have  telegraphed.  She 
was  buried  yesterday,  right  here,  and  we'll  get 
some  kind  of  stone.  You  say  how  you  think 
it'd  ought  to  be  marked.  That's  about  all 
there  is  to  tell  except  about  Yes.  He's  six 
years  old  now  and  Aunt  Mary  this  ain't  a 
place  for  him.  He's  a  nice  little  fellow  and  I 
hate  for  him  to  get  rough  and  he  will  if  he  stays 
here.  I'll  do  the  best  I  can  and  earn  money 
to  help  keep  him  but  I  want  he  should  come  and 
live  with  you.  ..." 

"I  won't  have  him!"  said  Mary  Chavah, 
aloud. 

".  .  .  he  could  come  alone  with  a  tag  all 
right  and  I  could  send  his  things  by  freight. 
He  ain't  got  much.  You  couldn't  help  but  like 
him  and  I  hate  .for  him  to  get  rough.  Please 
answer  and  oblige  your  loving  Nephew, 

"JOHN  BLOOD." 
60 


CHRISTMAS  61 

Mary  kept  reading  the  letter  and  staring  out 
into  the  snow.  Her  sister  Lily's  boy  —  they 
wanted  to  send  him  to  her.  Lily's  boy  and 
Adam  Blood's  —  the  man  whose  son  she  had 
thought  would  be  her  son.  It  was  twenty 
years  ago  that  he  had  been  coming  to  the  house 
—  this  same  house  —  and  she  had  thought  that 
he  was  coming  to  see  her,  had  never  thought 
of  Lily  at  all  till  Lily  had  told  her  of  her  own 
betrothal  to  him.  It  hurt  yet.  It  had  hurt 
freshly  when  he  had  died,  seven  years  ago. 
Now  Lily  was  dead,  and  Adam's  eldest  son, 
John,  wanted  to  send  this  little  brother  to  her, 
to  have. 

"I  won't  take  him,"  she  said  a  great  many 
times,  and  kept  reading  the  letter  and  star 
ing  out  into  the  snow. 

For  Lily  she  had  no  tears  —  she  seldom  had 
tears  at  all.  But  after  a  little  while  she  was 
conscious  of  a  weight  through  her  and  in  her, 


62  CHRISTMAS 

aching  in  her  throat,  her  breast,  her  body. 
She  rose  and  went  near  to  the  warmth  of  the 
fire,  then  to  the  freedom  of  the  window  against 
which  the  snow  lay  piled,  then  she  sat  down  in 
the  place  where  she  worked,  beside  her  patterns. 
The  gray  shawl  still  bound  her  head,  and  it  was 
still  in  her  mind  that  she  must  go  to  the  barn 
and  lock  it.  But  she  did  not  go  —  she  sat  in 
the  darkening  room  with  all  her  past  crowding 
it.  ... 

.  .  .  That  first  day  with  Adam  at  the  Blood's 
picnic,  given  at  his  home-coming.  They  had 
met  with  all  that  perilous,  ready-made  intimacy 
which  a  school  friendship  of  years  before  had 
allowed.  As  she  had  walked  beside  him  she 
had  known  well  what  he  was  going  to  mean  to 
her.  She  remembered  the  moment  when  he 
had  contrived  to  ask  her  to  wait  until  the  others 
went,  so  that  he  might  walk  home  with  her. 
And  when  they  had  reached  home,  there  on 


CHRISTMAS  63 

the  porch  —  where  she  had  just  shaken  the 
rugs  in  the  snow  —  Lily  had  been  sitting,  a 
stool  —  one  of  the  stools  now  at  length  ban 
ished  to  the  shed  —  holding  the  hurt  ankle 
that  had  kept  her  from  the  picnic.  Adam  had 
stayed  an  hour,  and  they  had  sat  beside  Lily. 
He  had  come  again  and  again,  and  they  had 
always  sat  beside  Lily.  Mary  remembered 
that  those  were  the  days  when  she  was  happy  in 
things  —  in  the  house  and  the  look  of  the  rooms 
and  of  the  little  garden  from  the  porch,  and 
of  the  old  red-cushioned  rocking-chairs  on  the 
tiny  "stoop."  She  had  loved  her  clothes  and 
her  little  routines,  and  all  these  things  had 
seemed  desirable  and  ultimate  because  they 
two  were  sharing  them.  Then  one  day  Mary 
had  joined  Lily  and  Adam  there  on  the  porch, 
and  Lily  had  been  looking  up  with  new  eyes, 
and  Mary  had  searched  her  face,  and  then 
Adam's  face;  and  they  had  all  seemed  in  a 


64  CHRISTMAS 

sudden  nakedness ;  and  Mary  had  known  that 
a  great  place  was  closed  against  her. 

Since  then  house  and  porch  and  garden  and 
routines  had  become  like  those  of  other  places. 
She  had  always  been  shut  outside  something, 
and  always  she  had  borne  burdens.  The  death 
of  her  parents,  gadflys  of  need,  worst  of  all  a 
curious  feeling  that  the  place  closed  against 
her  was  somehow  herself  —  that,  so  to  say, 
she  and  herself  had  never  once  met.  She  used 
to  say  that  to  herself  sometimes,  "There's 
two  of  me,  and  we  don't  meet  —  we  don't 
meet." 

"And  now  he  wants  me  to  take  her  boy  and 
Adam's,"  she  kept  saying  ;  "I'll  never  do  such 
a  thing  —  never." 

She  thought  that  the  news  of  Lily's  death 
was  what  gave  "her  the  strange,  bodily  hurt 
that  had  seized  her  —  the  news  that  what  she 
was  used  to  was  gone;  that  she  had  no  sister; 


CHRISTMAS  65 

that  the  days  of  their  being  together  and  all 
the  tasks  of  their  upbringing  were  finished. 
Then  she  thought  that  the  remembering  of 
those  days  of  her  happiness  and  her  pain,  and 
the  ache  of  what  might  have  been  and  of  what 
never  was,  had  come  to  torture  her  again.  But 
the  feeling  was  rather  the  weight  of  some  im 
minent  thing,  the  ravage  of  something  that 
grew  with  what  it  fed  on,  the  grasp  upon  her 
of  something  that  would  not  let  her  go.  ... 

She  had  never  seen  them  after  their  marriage, 
and  so  she  had  never  seen  either  of  the  children. 
Lily  had  once  sent  her  a  picture  of  John,  but 
she  had  never  sent  one  of  this  other  little  boy. 
Mary  tried  to  recall  what  they  had  ever  said  of 
him.  She  could  not  even  remember  his  baptis 
mal  name,  but  she  knew  that  they  had  called 
him  "Yes"  because  it  was  the  first  word  he  had 
learned  to  say,  and  because  he  had  said  it  to 
everything.  "The  baby  can  say  ' Yes,'"  Lily 


66  CHRISTMAS 

had  written  once;  "I  guess  it's  all  he'll  ever  be 
able  to  say.  He  says  it  all  day  long.  He  won't 
try  to  say  anything  else."  And  once  later: 
"We've  taken  to  calling  the  baby  'Yes,'  and 
now  he  calls  himself  that.  'Yes  wants  it,'  he 
says,  and  'Take  Yes,'  and  'Yes  is  going  off 
now.'  His  father  likes  it.  He  says  yes  is 
everything  and  no  is  nothing.  I  don't  think 
that  means  much,  but  we  call  him  that  for 
fun.  ..."  But  Mary  could  not  remember 
what  the  child's  real  name  was.  What  dif 
ference  did  it  make?  As  if  she  could  have  a 
child  meddling  round  the  house  while  she  was 
sewing.  But  of  course  this  was  not  the  real 
reason.  The  real  reason  was  that  she  could 
not  bring  up  a  child  —  did  she  not  know  that  ? 
"...  He's  six  years  old  now  and  Aunt 
Mary  this  ain't 'a  place  for  him.  He's  a  nice 
little  fellow  and  I  hate  for  him  to  get  rough  and 
he  will  if  he  stays  here.  ..." 


CHRISTMAS  67 

She  tried  to  think  who  else  could  take  him. 
They  had  no  one.  Adam,  she  knew,  had  no 
one.  Some  of  the  neighbours  there  by  the 
ranch  ...  it  was  absurd  to  send  him  that  long 
journey  ...  so  she  went  through  it  all,  denying 
with  all  the  old  denials.  And  all  the  while  the 
weight  in  her  body  grew  and  filled  her,  and 
she  was  strangely  conscious  of  her  breath. 

"What  ails  me?"  she  said  aloud,  and  got 
up  to  kindle  a  light.  She  was  amazed  to  see 
that  it  was  seven  o'clock,  and  long  past  her  sup 
per  hour.  As  she  took  from  the  clock  shelf 
the  key  to  the  barn,  some  one  rapped  at  the 
back  door  and  came  through  the  cold  kitchen 
with  friendly  familiarity.  It  was  Jenny,  a 
shawl  over  her  head,  her  face  glowing  with 
the  cold,  and  in  her  mittened  hands  a  flat 
parcel. 

"My  hand's  most  froze,"  Jenny  admitted. 
"I  didn't  want  to  roll  this  thing,  so  I  carried 


68  CHRISTMAS 

it  flat  out,  and  it  blew  considerable.  It's  the 
picture." 

"Get  yourself  warm,"  Mary  bade  her.  "I'll 
undo  it.  Who  is  it  of?"  she  added,  as  the 
papers  came  away. 

"That's  what  I  don't  know,"  said  Jenny, 
"but  I've  always  liked  it  around.  I  thought 
maybe  you'd  know." 

It  was  a  picture  which,  in  those  days,  had 
not  before  come  to  Old  Trail  Town.  The  figure 
was  that  of  a  youth,  done  by  a  master  of  the 
times  —  the  head  and  shoulders  of  a  youth 
who  seemed  to  be  looking  passionately  at  some 
thing  outside  the  picture. 

"There  it  is,  anyhow,"  Jenny  added.  "If 
you  like  it  enough  to  hang  it  up,  hang  it  up. 
It's  a  Christmas  present!"  Jenny  laughed 
elfishly. 

Mary  Chavah  held  the  picture  out  before  her. 

"I  do,"  she  said;  "I  could  take  a  real  fancy 


CHRISTMAS  69 

to  it.  I'll  have  it  up  on  the  wall.  Much 
obliged,  I'm  sure.  Set  down  a  minute." 

But  Jenny  could  not  do  this,  and  Mary,  the 
key  to  the  barn  still  in  her  hands,  followed  her 
out.  They  went  through  the  cold  kitchen  where 
the  refrigerator  and  the  ironing  board  and  the 
clothes  bars  and  all  the  familiar  things  stood  in 
the  dark.  To  Mary  these  were  sunk  in  a  great 
obscurity  and  insignificance,  and  even  Jenny 
being  there  was  unimportant  beside  the  thing 
that  her  letter  had  brought  to  think  about. 
They  stepped  out  into  the  clear,  glittering 
night,  with  its  clean,  white  world,  and  its  clean, 
dark  sky  on  which  some  story  was  written  in 
stars.  Capella  was  shining  almost  overhead 
—  and  another  star  was  hanging  bright  in  the 
east,  as  if  the  east  were  always  a  dawning 
place  for  some  new  star. 

"Mary !"  said  Jenny,  there  in  the  dark. 

"Yes,"  Mary  answered. 


70  CHRISTMAS 

"You  know  I  said  I  just  couldn't  bear  not 
to  have  any  Christmas  —  this  Christmas?" 

"Yes,"  Mary  said. 

"  Did  you  know  why  ?  " 

"I  thought  because  it's  your  and  Bruce's 
first—" 

"No,"  Jenny  said,  "that  isn't  all  why.  It's 
something  else." 

She  slipped  her  arm  within  Mary's  and 
stood  silent.  And,  Mary  still  not  understand 
ing,— 

"It's  somebody  else,"  Jenny  said  faintly. 

Mary  stirred,  turned  to  her  in  the  dimness. 

"Why,  Jenny!"  she  said. 

"Soon,"  said  Jenny. 

The  two  women  stood  for  a  moment,  Jenny 
saying  a  little,  Mary  quiet. 

"It'll  be  late  in  December,"  Jenny  finished. 
"That  seems  so  wonderful  to  me  —  so  wonder 
ful.  Late  in  December,  like  — " 


CHRISTMAS  71 

The  cold  came  pricking  about  them,  and 
Jenny  moved  to  go.  Mary,  the  shawled  figure 
on  the  upper  step,  looked  down  on  the  shawled 
figure  below  her,  and  abruptly  spoke. 

"It's  funny/'  Mary  said,  "that  you  should 
tell  me  that  —  now.  I  haven't  told  you  what's 
in  my  letter." 

"What  was?"  asked  Jenny. 

Mary  told  her.  "They  want  I  should  have 
the  little  boy,"  she  ended  it. 

"Oh  ..."  Jenny  said.  "Mary!  How 
wonderful  for  you!  Why,  it's  almost  next  as 
wonderful  as  mine  ! " 

Mary  hesitated  for  a  breath.  But  she  was 
profoundly  stirred  by  what  Jenny  had  told 
her  —  the  first  time,  so  far  as  she  could  recall, 
that  news  like  this  had  ever  come  to  her  di 
rectly,  as  a  secret  and  a  marvel.  News  of  the 
village  births  usually  came  in  gossip,  in  com 
miseration,  in  suspicion.  Falling  as  did  this 


72  CHRISTMAS 

confidence  in  a  time  when  she  was  re-living  her 
old  hope,  when  Adam's  boy  stood  outside  her 
threshold,  the  moment  quite  suddenly  put  on 
its  real  significance. 

"We  can  plan  together,"  Jenny  was  saying. 
"Ain't  it  wonderful?" 

"Ain't  it?"  Mary  said  then,  simply,  and 
kissed  Jenny,  when  Jenny  came  and  kissed  her. 
Then  Jenny  went  away. 

Mary  went  on  to  the  barn,  and  opened  the 
door,  and  listened.  She  had  brought  no  lan 
tern,  but  the  soft  stillness  within  needed  no 
vigilance.  The  hay  smell  from  the  loft  and  the 
mangers,  the  even  breath  of  the  cows,  the  quiet 
safety  of  the  place,  met  her.  She  was  wonder 
ing  at  herself,  but  she  was  struggling  not  at  all. 
It  was  as  if  concerning  the  little  boy,  something 
had  decided  for  her,  in  a  soft,  fierce  rush  of  feel 
ing  not  her  own.  She  had  committed  herself  to 
Jenny  almost  without  will.  But  Mary  felt  no  ex- 


CHRISTMAS  73 

ultation,  and  the  weight  within  her  did  not  lift. 

"I  really  couldn't  do  anything  else  but  take 
him,  I  s'pose,"  she  thought.  "I  wonder  what'll 
come  on  me  next  ?  " 

All  the  while,  she  was  conscious  of  the  raw 
smell  of  the  clover  in  the  hay  of  the  mangers,  as 
if  something  of  Summer  were  there  in  the  cold. 


VI 

MARY  CHAVAH  sent  her  letter  of  blunt  di 
rections  concerning  her  sister's  headstone  and 
the  few  belongings  which  her  sister  had  wished 
her  to  have.  The  last  lines  of  the  letter  were 
about  the  boy. 

"Send  the  little  one  along.  I  am  not  the 
one,  but  I  don't  know  what  else  to  tell  you  to 
do  with  him.  Let  me  know  when  to  expect 
him,  and  put  his  name  in  with  his  things  —  I 
can't  remember  his  right  name." 

When  the  answer  came  from  John  Blood,  a 
fortnight  later,  it  said  that  a  young  fellow  of 
those  parts  was  starting  back  home  shortly 
to  spend  Christmas,  and  would  take  charge  of 
the  child  as  far  as  the  City,  and  there  put  him 
on  his  train  for  Old  Trail  Town.  She  would 

74 


CHRISTMAS  75 

be  notified  just  what  day  to  expect  him,  and 
John  knew  how  glad  his  mother  would  have 
been  and  his  father  too,  and  he  was  her 
grateful  Nephew.  P.  S.  He  would  send  some 
money  every  month  "  to  ward  him." 

The  night  after  she  received  this  letter,  Mary 
lay  long  awake,  facing  what  it  was  going  to 
mean  to  have  him  there:  to  have  a  child 
there. 

She  recalled  what  she  had  heard  other 
women  say  about  it,  —  stray  utterances,  made 
with  the  burdened  look  that  hid  a  secret  com 
placency,  a  kind  of  pleased  freemasonry  in  a 
universal  lot. 

"The  children  bring  so  much  sand  into  the 
house.  You'd  think  it  was  horses." 

"...  the  center  table  looks  loaded  and  ready 
to  start  half  the  time  .  .  .  but  I  can't  help  it, 
with  the  children's  books  and  truck." 

" .       .  never  would  have  another  house  built 


76  CHRISTMAS 

without  a  coat  closet.  The  children's  cloaks 
and  caps  and  rubbers  litter  up  everything." 

"...  every  one  of  their  knees  out,  and 
their  underclothes  outgrown,  and  their  waists 
soiled,  the  whole  time.  And  I  do  try  so 
hard  ..." 

Now  with  all  these  bewilderments  she  was 
to  have  to  do.  She  wondered  if  she  would  know 
how  to  dress  him.  Once  she  had  watched  Mis' 
Winslow  dress  a  child,  and  she  remembered 
what  unexpected  places  Mis'  Winslow  had 
buttoned — buttonholes  that  went  up  and  down 
in  the  skirt  bands,  and  so  on.  Armholes  might 
be  too  small  and  garters  too  tight,  and  how 
was  one  ever  to  know?  If  it  were  a  little 
girl  now  .  .  .  but  a  little  boy.  .  .  .  What 
would  she  talk  to  him  about  while  they  ate 
together  ? 

She  lay  in  the  dark  and  planned  —  with  no 
pleasure,  but  merely  because  she  always  planned 


'HE  STOOD  LOOKING  AT  IT  FROM  PART  WAY 
ACROSS  THE  ROAD" 


I 


'   .  '- 


CHRISTMAS  77 

everything,  her  dress,  her  baking,  what  she 
would  say  to  this  one  and  that.  She  would 
put  up  a  stove  in  the  back  parlour,  and  give 
him  the  room  "off."  She  was  glad  that  the 
parlour  was  empty  and  clean  —  "no  knick- 
knacks  for  a  boy  to  knock  around,"  she  found 
herself  thinking.  And  a  child  would  like  the 
bedroom  wallpaper,  with  the  owl  border. 
When  Summer  came  he  could  have  the  room 
over  the  dining  room,  with  the  kitchen  roof 
sloping  away  from  it  where  he  could  dry  his 
hazelnuts  —  she  had  thought  of  the  pasture 
hazelnuts,  first  thing.  There  were  a  good 
many  things  a  boy  would  like  about  the  place : 
the  bird  house  where  the  martins  always  built, 
the  hens,  the  big  hollow  tree,  the  pasture  ant 
hill.  .  .  .  She  would  have  to  find  out  the 
things  he  liked  to  eat.  She  would  have  to  help 
him  with  his  lessons  —  she  could  do  that  for 
only  a  little  while,  until  he  would  be  too  old  to 


78  CHRISTMAS 

need  her.  Then  maybe  there  would  come  the 
time  when  he  would  ask  her  things  that  she 
would  not  know.  .  .  . 

She  fell  asleep  wondering  how  he  would  look. 
Already,  not  from  any  impatience  to  have  this 
done,  but  because  that  was  the  way  in  which 
she  worked,  she  had  his  room  in  order;  and 
her  picture  of  his  father  was  by  the  mirror, 
the  young  face  of  his  father.  Something 
faded  had  been  written  below  the  picture,  and 
this  she  had  painstakingly  rubbed  away  before 
she  set  the  picture  in  its  place.  Next  day,  while 
she  was  working  on  Mis'  Jane  Moran's  bead 
basque  that  was  to  be  cut  over  and  turned, 
she  laid  it  aside  and  cut  out  a  jacket  pattern,  and 
a  plaited  waist  pattern  —  just  to  see  if  she  could. 
These  she  rolled  up  impatiently  and  stuffed 
away  in  her  pattern  bookcase. 

"I  knew  how  to  do  them  all  the  while,  and  I 
never  knew  I  knew,"  she  thought  with  annoyed 


CHRISTMAS  79 

surprise.  "I  s'pose  I'll  waste  a  lot  of  time  pot 
tering  over  him." 

It  was  so  that  she  spent  the  weeks  until  the 
letter  came  telling  her  what  day  the  child 
would  start.  On  the  afternoon  of  the  day  the 
letter  came,  she  went  down  town  to  the  Amos 
Ames  Emporium  to  buy  a  washbasin  and 
pitcher  for  the  room  she  meant  the  little  boy 
to  have.  She  stood  looking  at  a  basin  with  a 
row  of  brown  dogs  around  the  rim,  when  over 
her  shoulder  Mis7  Abby  Winslow  spoke. 

"You  ain't  buying  a  Christmas  present  for 
anybody,  are  you?"  she  asked  warningly. 

Mary  started  guiltily  and  denied  it. 

"Well,  what  in  time  do  you  want  with  dogs 
on  the  basin?"  Mis'  Winslow  demanded. 

Almost  against  her  own  wish,  Mary  told 
her.  Mis'  Winslow  was  one  of  those  whose 
faces  are  invariable  forerunners  of  the  sort  of 
thing  they  are  going  to  say.  With  eyebrows, 


8o  CHRISTMAS 

eyes,  forehead,  head,  and  voice  she  took  the 
news. 

"He  is!  Forever  and  ever  more.  When's 
he  going  to  get  here?" 

"Week  after  next,"  Mary  said  listlessly. 
"  It's  an  awful  responsibility,  ain't  it  —  taking 
a  child  so?" 

Mis'  Winslow's  face  abruptly  rejected  its  own 
anxious  lines  and  let  the  eyes  speak  for  it. 

"I  always  think  children  is  like  air,"  she  said; 
"you  never  realize  how  hard  they're  pressing 
down  on  you  —  but  you  do  know  you  can't  live 
without  them." 

Mary  looked  at  her,  her  own  face  not  lighting. 

"I'd  rather  go  along  like  I  am,"  she  said; 
"I'm  used  to  myself  the  way  I  am." 

"MaryChavah  !"  said  Mis'  Winslow,  sharply, 
"a  vegetable  sprouts.  Can't  you?  Is  these 
stocking  caps  made  so's  they  won't  ravel?" 
she  inquired  capably  of  Abel  Ames.  "These 


CHRISTMAS  8 1 

are  real  good  value,  Mary,"  she  added  kindly. 
"  Better  surprise  the  little  thing  with  one  of 
these.  A  red  one." 

Mary  counted  over  her  money,  and  bought 
the  red  stocking  cap  and  the  basin  with  the 
puppies.  Then  she  went  into  the  street.  The 
sense  of  oppression,  of  striving,  that  had  seldom 
left  her  since  that  night  in  the  stable,  made  the 
day  a  thing  to  be  borne,  to  be  breasted.  The  air 
was  thick  with  snow,  and  in  the  whiteness  the 
dreary  familiarity  of  the  drug  store,  the  meat 
market,  the  post  office,  the  Simeon  Buck  Dry 
Goods  Exchange,  smote  her  with  a  passion  to  es 
cape  from  them  all,  to  breed  new  familiars,  to  get 
free  of  the  thing  that  she  had  said  she  would  do. 

"And  I  could,"  she  thought;  "I  could  tele 
graph  to  John  not  to  send  him.  But  Jenny 
—  she  can't.  I  don't  see  how  she  stands 
it.  .  .  ." 

The  thought  may  have  been  why,  instead  of 


82  CHRISTMAS 

going  home,  she  went  to  see  Jenny.  A  neigh 
bor  was  in  the  sitting  room  with  Mrs.  Wing. 
Jenny  met  Mary  at  the  kitchen  door  and  stood 
against  a  background  of  clothes  drying  on  lines 
stretched  indoors. 

"Don't  you  want  to  come  upstairs?"  Jenny 
said.  "  There  ain't  a  fire  up  there  —  but  I  can 
show  you  the  things." 

She  had  put  them  all  in  the  bottom  drawer, 
as  women  always  do ;  and,  as  women  always  do, 
had  laid  them  so  that  all  the  lace  and  embroidery 
and  pink  ribbons  possible  showed  in  a  flutter 
when  the  drawer  was  opened.  Jenny  took  the 
things  out,  one  at  a  time,  unfolded,  discussed, 
compared,  with  all  the  tireless  zeal  of  a  robin 
with  a  straw  in  its  mouth  or  of  a  tree,  blos 
soming.  "Smell  of  them,"  Jenny  bade  her. 
"Honestly,  wouldn't  you  know  by  the  smell  who 
they  are  for?"  "I  donno  but  you  would," 
Mary  admitted  awkwardly,  and  marveled 


CHRISTMAS  83 

dumbly  at  the  newness  Jenny  was  feeling  in 
that  which,  after  all,  was  not  new  ! 

When  these  things  were  all  out,  a  little 
tissue-paper  parcel  was  left  lying  in  the 
drawer. 

"There's  one  more,"  Mary  said. 

Jenny  flushed,  hesitated,  lifted  it. 

"That's  nothing,"  she  said;  "before  I  came 
I  made  some  little  things  for  its  Christmas.  I 
thought  maybe  it  would  come  first,  and  we'd 
have  the  Christmas  in  my  room,  and  I  made 
some  little  things  —  just  for  fun,  you  know. 
But  it  won't  be  fair  to  do  it  now,  with  the 
whole  town  so  set  against  our  having  any 
Christmas.  Mary,  it  just  seems  as  though  I 
had  to  have  a  Christmas  this  year  !" 

"Oh,  well,"  said  Mary,  "the  baby'll  be 
your  Christmas.  The  town  can't  help  that, 
I  guess." 

"I    know,"    Jenny    flashed    back    brightly, 


84  CHRISTMAS 

"you  and  I  have  got  the  best  of  them,  haven't 
we  ?  We Ve  each  got  one  present  coming,  any 
way." 

"I  s'pose  we  have  ..."  Mary  said. 

She  looked  at  Jenny's  Christmas  things  — 
a  ribbon  rattle,  a  crocheted  cap,  a  first  picture 
book,  a  cascade  of  colored  rings  —  and  then  in 
grim  humour  at  Jenny. 

"It'll  never  miss  its  Christmas,"  she  said 
dryly. 

" Don't  you  think  so?"  said  Jenny,  soberly. 
"  I  donno.  It  seems  as  if  it'd  be  kind  o'  lone 
some  to  get  born  around  Christmas  and  not 
find  any  going  on." 

She  put  the  things  away,  and  closed  the 
drawer.  For  no  appreciable  reason,  she  kept 
it  locked,  and  the  key  under  the  bureau  cover. 

"Do  you  know  yet  when  yours  is  coming?" 
Jenny  asked,  as  she  rose. 

"Week  after  next,"  Mary  repeated,  — "two 


CHRISTMAS  85 

weeks  from  last  night/7  she  confessed,  "if  he 
comes  straight  through." 

"I  think,"  said  Jenny,  "I  think  mine  will  be 
here  —  before  then." 

When  they  reached  the  foot  of  the  stair,  Mary 
unexpectedly  refused  to  go  in  the  sitting  room. 

"No,"  she  said,  "I  must  be  getting  home.  I 
just  come  out  for  a  minute,  anyway.  I'm  — 
Fm  much  obliged  for  what  you  showed  me,"  she 
added,  and  hesitated.  "I've  got  his  room  fixed 
up  real  nice.  There's  owls  on  the  wall  paper 
and  puppies  on  the  washbasin,"  she  said. 
"Come  in  when  you  can  and  see  it." 

It  was  almost  dusk  when  Mary  reached  home. 
While  she  was  passing  the  billboard  at  the 
corner  —  a  flare  of  yellow  letters,  as  if  Colour 
and  the  Alphabet  had  united  to  breed  a  mon 
ster  —  she  heard  children  shouting.  A  block 
away,  and  across  the  street,  coming  home  from 
Rolleston's  hill  where  they  had  been  coasting, 


86  CHRISTMAS 

were  Bennet  and  Gussie  Bates,  little  Emily, 
Tab  Winslow,  and  Pep.  Nearly  every  day  of 
snow  they  passed  her  house.  She  always  heard 
them  talking,  and  usually  she  heard,  across  at 
the  corner,  the  click  of  the  penny-in-the-slot 
machine,  which  no  child  seemed  able  to  pass 
without  pulling.  To-night,  as  she  heard  them 
coming,  Mary  fumbled  in  her  purse.  Three, 
four,  five  pennies  she  found  and  ran  across  the 
street  and  dropped  them  in  the  slot  machine, 
and  gained  her  own  door  before  the  children 
came.  She  stood  at  her  dark  threshold,  and 
listened.  She  had  not  reckoned  in  vain.  One 
of  the  children  pushed  down  on  the  rod,  in  the 
child's  eternal  hope  of  magic,  and  when  magic 
came  and  three,  four,  five  chocolates  dropped 
obediently  in  their  hands,  Mary  listened  to 
what  they  said.  It  was  not  much,  and  it 
was  not  very  coherent,  but  it  was  wholly  intel 
ligible. 


CHRISTMAS  87 

"Look  at !"  shrieked  Bennet,  who  had  made 
the  magic. 

16 Did  it?"  cried  Gussie,  and  repeated  the 
operation. 

"It  —  it  —  it  never  !"  said  Tab  Winslow,  at 
the  third. 

"  Make  it  again  —  make  it  again  ! "  cried  little 
Emily,  and  they  did. 

"Gorry,"  observed  Pep,  in  ecstasy. 

When  it  would  give  no  more,  they  divided 
with  the  other  children  and  ran  on,  their  red 
mittens  and  mufflers  flaming  in  the  snow. 
Mary  stood  staring  after  them  for  a  moment, 
then  she  closed  her  door. 

"I  wonder  what  made  me  do  that,"  she 
thought. 

In  her  dining  room  she  mended  the  fire  with 
out  taking  off  her  hat.  It  was  curious,  she 
reflected ;  here  was  this  room  looking  the  way  it 
looked,  and  away  off  there  was  the  little  fellow 


88  CHRISTMAS 

who  had  never  seen  the  room;  and  in  a  little 
while  he  would  be  calling  this  room  home,  and 
looking  for  his  books  and  his  mittens,  and 
knowing  it  better  than  any  other  place  in  the 
world.  And  there  was  Jenny,  with  that  bot 
tom  drawerful,  and  pretty  soon  somebody  that 
now  was  not,  would  be,  and  would  be  wearing 
the  drawerful  and  calling  Jenny  "mother," 
and  would  know  her  better  than  any  one  else 
in  the  world.  Mary  could  not  imagine  that 
little  boy  of  Lily's  getting  used  to  her  —  Mary 
—  and  calling  her  —  well,  what  would  he  call 
her?  She  hadn't  thought  of  that.  .  .  . 

"Bother,"  thought  Mary  Chavah,  "there's 
going  to  be  forty  nuisances  about  it  that  I 
s'pose  I  haven't  even  thought  of  yet." 

She  stood  by  the  window.  She  had  not 
lighted  the  lamp,  so  the  world  showed  white, 
not  black.  Snow  makes  outdoors  look  big, 
she  thought.  But  it  was  big  —  what  a  long 


CHRISTMAS  89 

journey  it  was  to  Idaho.  Suppose  .  .  .  some 
thing  happened  to  the  man  he  was  to  travel 
with.  John  Blood  was  only  a  boy;  he  would 
probably  put  the  child's  name  and  her  address 
in  the  little  traveler's  pocket,  and  these  would 
be  lost.  The  child  was  hardly  old  enough  to 
remember  what  to  do.  He  would  go  astray, 
and  none  of  them  would  ever  know  what  had 
become  of  him  .  .  .  and  what  would  become  of 
him?  She  saw  him  and  his  bundle  of  clothes 
alone  in  the  station  in  the  City.  .  .  . 

She  turned  from  the  window  and  mechani 
cally  mended  the  fire  again.  She  drew  down  the 
window  shade  and  went  to  the  coat  closet  to 
hang  away  her  wraps.  Then  abruptly  she  took 
up  her  purse,  counted  out  the  money  in  the 
firelight,  and  went  out  the  door  and  down  the 
street  in  the  dusk,  and  into  the  post  office, 
which  was  also  the  telegraph  office,  —  one  which 
the  little  town  owed  to  Ebenezer  Rule,  and  it  a 


go  CHRISTMAS 

rival  to  the  other  telegraph  office  at  the 
station. 

"How  much  does  it  cost  to  send  a  telegram  ? " 
she  demanded.  "Idaho,"  she  answered  the 
man's  question,  flushing  at  her  omission. 

While  the  man,  Affer  by  name,  laboriously 
looked  it  up,  —  covering  incredible  little  dirty 
figures  with  an  incredibly  big  dirty  forefinger,  — 
Mary  stood  staring  at  the  list  of  names  tacked 
below  the  dog-eared  Christmas  Notice.  She  re 
membered  that  she  had  not  yet  signed  it  herself. 
She  asked  for  a  pencil  —  causing  confusion  to 
the  little  figures  and  delay  to  the  big  finger  — 
and,  while  she  waited,  wrote  her  name.  "A 
good,  sensible  move,"  she  thought,  as  she  signed. 

When  Affer  gave  her  the  rate,  thrusting  finger 
and  figures  jointly  beneath  the  bars, — solicitous 
of  his  own  accuracy,  —  Mary  filed  her  message. 
It  was  to  John  Blood,  and  it  read  :  — 

"Be  sure  you  tie  his  tag  on  him  good." 


VII 

EBENEZER  RULE  had  meant  to  go  to  the  City 
before  cold  weather  came.  He  had  there  a 
small  and  decent  steam-warmed  flat  where  he 
boiled  his  own  eggs  and  made  his  own  coffee, 
read  his  newspapers  and  kept  his  counsel,  de 
scending  nightly  to  the  ground-floor  cafe  to  dine 
on  ambiguous  dishes  at  tables  of  other  bank 
swallows  who  nested  in  the  same  cliff.  But  as 
the  days  went  by,  he  found  himself  staying  on 
in  Old  Trail  Town,  with  this  excuse  and  that, 
offered  by  himself  to  himself.  As,  for  example, 
that  in  the  factory  there  were  old  account  books 
that  he  must  go  through.  And  having  put  off 
this  task  from  day  to  day  and  finding  at  last 
nothing  more  to  dally  with,  he  set  out  one 

morning  for  the  ancient  building  down  in  that 

91 


92  CHRISTMAS 

part  of  the  village  which  was  older  than  the 
rest  and  was  where  his  business  was  conducted 
when  it  was  conducted. 

It  had  snowed  in  the  night,  and  Buff  Miles, 
who  drove  the  village  snowplow,  was  also  driver 
of  "the  'bus."  So  on  the  morning  after  a  snow 
fall,  the  streets  always  lay  buried  thick  until 
after  the  8.10  Express  came  in ;  and  since  on  the 
morning  following  a  snowfall  the  8.10  Express 
was  always  late,  Old  Trail  Town  lay  locked 
in  a  kind  of  circular  argument,  and  everybody 
stayed  indoors  or  stepped  high  through  drifts. 
The  direct  way  to  the  factory  was  virtually  un 
trodden,  and  Ebenezer  made  a  detour  through 
the  business  street  in  search  of  some  semblance 
of  a  "track." 

The  light  of  a  Winter  morning  is  not  kind, 
only  just.  It  is  just  to  the  sky  and  discovers 
it  to  be  dominant;  to  trees,  and  their  lines  are 
seen  to  be  alive,  like  leaves;  to  folk,  and  no 


CHRISTMAS  93 

disguise  avails.  Summer  gives  complements 
and  accessories  to  the  good  things  in  a  human 
face.  Winter  affords  nothing  save  disclosure. 
In  the.  uncompromising  cleanness  of  that  wash 
of  Winter  light,  Ebenezer  Rule  was  himself,  for 
anybody  to  see.  Looking  like  countless  other 
men,  lean,  alert,  preoccupied,  his  tall  figure 
stooped,  his  smooth,  pale  face  like  a  photograph 
too  much  retouched,  this  commonplace  man 
took  his  place  in  the  day  almost  as  one  of  its 
externals.  With  that  glorious  pioneer  trio,  min 
eral,  vegetable  and  animal;  and  with  intellect, 
that  worthy  tool,  he  did  his  day's  work.  His 
face  was  one  that  had  never  asked  itself,  say, 
of  a  Winter  morning:  What  else?  And  the 
Winter  light  searched  him  pitilessly  to  find 
that  question  somewhere  in  him. 

Before  the  Simeon  Buck  North  American 
Dry  Goods  Exchange,  Simeon  Buck  himself 
had  just  finished  shoveling  his  walk,  and  stood 


94  CHRISTMAS 

wiping  his  snow  shovel  with  an  end  of  his 
muffler.  When  he  saw  Ebenezer,  he  shook  the 
muffler  at  him,  and  then,  over  his  left  shoulder, 
jabbed  the  air  with  his  thumb. 

"Look  at  here,"  he  said,  his  head  reenforcing 
his  gesture  toward  his  show  window,  "look  what 
I  done  this  morning.  Nice  little  touch  —  eh  ?  " 

In  the  show  window  of  the  Exchange  — 
Dry  Goods  Exchange  was  just  the  name  of  it  for 
the  store  carried  everything  —  a  hodgepodge  of 
canned  goods,  lace  curtains,  kitchen  utensils, 
wax  figures,  and  bird  cages  had  been  ranged 
round  a  center  table  of  golden  oak.  On  the 
table  stood  a  figure  that  was  as  familiar  to  Old 
Trail  Town  as  was  its  fire  engine  and  its  sprin 
kling  cart.  Like  these,  appearing  intermittently, 
the  figure  had  seized  on  the  imagination  of  the 
children  and  grown  in  association  until  it  be 
longed  to  everybody,  by  sheer  use  and  wont. 
It  was  a  papier-mache  Santa  Claus,  three  feet 


CHRISTMAS  95 

high,  white-bearded,  gray-gowned,  with  tall 
pointed  cap  —  rather  the  more  sober  Saint 
Nicholas  of  earlier  days  than  the  rollicking, 
red-garbed  Saint  Nick  of  now.  Only,  whereas 
for  years  he  had  graced  the  window  of  the 
Exchange,  bearing  over  his  shoulder  a  little 
bough  of  green  for  a  Christmas  tree,  this  season 
he  stood  treeless,  and  instead  bore  on  his 
shoulder  a  United  States  flag.  On  a  placard 
below  him  Simeon  had  laboriously  lettered :  — 

HIGH  COST  OF  LIVING 

AND   TOO   MUCH  FlJSS 

MAKES  FOLKS  WANT  A 

SANE  CHRISTMAS 
ME  Too.  S.  C. 

"Ain't  that  neat?"  said  Simeon. 
Ebenezer  looked.     "  What's  the  flag  f or  ? ' '  he 
inquired  dryly. 

"Well,"  said  Simeon,  "he  had  to  carry  some- 


96  CHRISTMAS 

thing.  I  thought  of  a  toy  gun  —  but  that  didn't 
seem  real  appropriate.  A  Japanese  umbrella 
wasn't  exactly  in  season,  seems  though.  A  flag 
was  about  the  only  thing  I  could  think  of  to 
have  him  hold.  A  flag  is  always  kind  of  tasty, 
don't  you  think?" 

"Oh,  it's  harmless,"  Ebenezer  said,  "harm 
less." 

"No  hustling  business,"  Simeon  pursued, 
"  can  be  contented  with  just  not  doing  something. 
It  ain't  enough  not  to  have  no  Christmas. 
You've  got  to  find  something  that'll  express 
nothing,  and  express  it  forcible.  In  business, 
a  minus  sign,"  said  Simeon,  "is  as  good  as 
a  plus,  if  you  can  keep  it  whirling  round  and 
round." 

This  Ebenezer  mulled  and  chuckled  over  as 
he  went  on  down  the  street.  He  wondered 
what  the  Emporium  would  do  to  keep  up  with 
the  Exchange.  But  in  the  Emporium  window 


CHRISTMAS  97 

there  was  nothing  save  the  usual  mill-end  dis 
play  for  the  winter  white  goods  sale. 

Ebenezer  opened  the  store  door  and  put  his 
head  in. 

"Hey,"  he  shouted  at  Abel,  back  at  the  desk, 
"can't  you  keep  up  with  Simeon's  window?" 

Abel  came  down  the  aisle  between  the  lengths 
of  white  stuff  plaited  into  folds  at  either  side. 
The  fire  had  just  been  kindled  in  the  stove,  and 
the  air  in  the  store  was  still  frosty.  Abel,  in 
his  overcoat,  was  blowing  on  his  fingers. 

"I  ain't  much  of  any  heart  to,"  said  he,  "but 
the  night  before  Christmas  I  guess'll  do  about 
right  for  mine." 

"What'll  you  put  up?"  Ebenezer  asked, 
closing  the  door  behind  him. 

"Well,  sir,"  said  Abel,  "I  ain't  made  up  my 
mind  full  yet.  But  I'll  be  billblowed  if  I'm 
going  to  let  Christmas  go  by  without  saying 
something  about  it  in  the  window." 


g8  CHRISTMAS 

"Night  before  Christmas'll  be  too  late  to 
advertise  anything/7  said  Ebenezer.  "El  was 
in  trade,"  he  said,  half  closing  his  eyes,  "I'd  fill 
my  window  up  with  useful  articles  —  caps  and 
mittens  and  stockings  and  warm  underwear 
and  dishes  and  toothbrushes.  And  I'd  say: 
'  Might  as  well  afford  these  on  what  you  saved 
out  of  Christmas.'  You'd  ought  to  get  all  the 
advertising  you  can  out  of  any  situation." 

Abel  shook  his  head. 

"I  ain't  much  on  such,"  he  said  lightly  — 
and  then  looked  intently  at  Ebenezer.  "Jenny's 
been  buying  quite  a  lot  here  for  her  Christmas," 
he  said. 

Ebenezer  was  blank.  "Jenny?"  he  said. 
"Jenny  Wing?  I  heard  she  was  here.  I  ain't 
seen  her.  Is  she  bound  to  keep  Christmas 
anyhow?" 

"Just  white  goods,  it  was,"  said  Abel,  briefly. 

Ebenezer  frowned  his  lack  of  understanding. 


CHRISTMAS  99 

"I  shouldn't  think  her  and  Bruce  had  much  of 
anything  to  buy  anything  with/'  he  said.  "I 
s'pose  you  know,"  he  added,  "that  Bruce,  the 
young  beggar,  quit  working  for  me  in  the  City 
after  the  —  the  failure  ?  Threw  up  his  job  with 
me,  and  took  God  knows  what  to  do." 

Abel  nodded  gravely.  AU  Old  Trail  Town 
knew  that,  and  honoured  Bruce  for  it. 

"Headstrong  couple,"  Ebenezer  added.  "  So 
Jenny's  bent  on  having  Christmas,  no  matter 
what  the  town  decides,  is  she?"  he  added, 
"it's  like  her,  the  minx." 

"I  don't  think  it  was  planned  that  way," 
Abel  said  simply;  "she's  only  buying  white 
goods,"  he  repeated.  And,  Ebenezer  still  star 
ing,  "  Surely  you  know  what  Jenny's  come  home 
for?"  Abel  said. 

A  moment  or  two  later  Ebenezer  was  out  on 
the  street  again,  his  face  turned  toward  the 
factory.  He  was  aware  that  Abel  caught  open 


ioo  CHRISTMAS 

the  door  behind  him  and  called  after  him, 
"  Whenever  you  get  ready  to  sell  me  that  there 
star  glass,  you  know.  .  .  ."  Ebenezer  an 
swered  something,  but  his  responses  were  so 
often  guttural  and  indistinguishable  that  his  will 
to  reply  was  regarded  as  nominal,  anyway.  He 
also  knew  that  now,  just  before  him,  Buff  Miles 
was  proceeding  with  the  snowplow,  cutting  a 
firm,  white  way,  smooth  and  sparkling  for  soft 
treading,  momentarily  bordered  by  a  feathery 
flux,  that  tumbled  and  heaped  and  then  lay  quiet 
in  a  glitter  of  crystals.  But  his  thought  went 
on  without  these  things  and  without  his  will. 

Bruce's  baby!  It  would  be  a  Rule,  too. 
....  the  third  generation,  the  third  generation. 
And  accustomed  as  he  was  to  relate  every  expe 
rience  to  himself,  measure  it,  value  it  by  its 
own  value  to  him,  the  effect  of  his  reflection  was 
at  first  single :  The  third  generation  of  Rules. 
Was  he  as  old  as  that? 


101 


It  seemed  only  yest'erday  tbat;Bjuce  had  been 
a  boy,  in  a  blue  necktie  to  match  his  eyes,  and 
shoes  which  for  some  reason  he  always  put  on 
wrong,  so  that  the  buttons  were  on  the  inside. 
Bruce's  baby.  Good  heavens!  It  had  been  a 
shock  when  Bruce  graduated  from  the  high 
school,  a  shock  when  he  had  married,  but  his 
baby  ...  it  was  incredible  that  he  himself 
should  be  so  old  as  that. 

.  .  .  This  meant,  then,  that  if  Malcolm 
had  lived,  Malcolm  might  have  had  a  child 
now.  .  .  . 

Ebenezer  had  not  meant  to  think  that.  It 
was  as  if  the  Thought  came  and  spoke  to  him. 
He  never  allowed  himself  to  think  of  that  other 
life  of  his,  when  his  wife,  Letty,  and  his  son 
Malcolm  had  been  living.  Nobody  in  Old 
Trail  Town  ever  heard  him  speak  of  them  or 
had  ever  been  answered  when  Ebenezer  had 
been  spoken  to  concerning  them.  A  high  white 


102  CHRISTMAS 

shaft  in  the -cemetery  marked  the  two  graves. 
All  about  them  doors  had  been  closed.  But 
with  the  thought  of  this  third  generation,  the 
doors  all  opened.  He  looked  along  ways  that 
he  had  forgotten. 

As  he  went  he  was  unconscious,  as  he  was 
always  unconscious,  of  the  little  street.  He  saw 
the  market  square,  not  as  the  heart  of  the  town, 
but  as  a  place  for  buying  and  selling,  and  the 
little  shops  were  to  him  not  ways  of  providing 
the  town  with  life,  but  ways  of  providing  their 
keepers  with  a  livelihood.  Beyond  these  was  a 
familiar  setting,  arranged  that  day  with  white 
background  and  heaped  roofs  and  laden  boughs, 
the  houses  standing  side  by  side,  like  human 
beings.  There  they  were,  like  the  chorus  to 
the  thing  he  was  thinking  about.  They  were 
all  thinking  about  it,  too.  Every  one  of  them 
knew  what  he  knew.  Yet  he  never  saw  the 
bond,  but  he  thought  they  were  only  the  places 


CHRISTMAS  103 

where  men  lived  who  had  been  his  factory  hands 
and  would  be  so  yet  if  he  had  not  cut  them 
away:  Ben  Torrey,  shoveling  off  his  front  walk 
with  his  boy  sweeping  behind  him;  August 
Muir,  giving  his  little  girl  a  ride  on  the  snow 
shovel ;  Nettie  Hatch,  clearing  the  ice  out  of  her 
mail  box,  while  her  sister  —  the  lame  one  — 
watched  from  her  chair  by  the  window,  inter 
ested  as  in  a  real  event.  Ebenezer  spoke  to 
them  from  some  outpost  of  consciousness  which 
his  thought  did  not  pass.  The  little  street  was 
not  there,  as  it  was  never  there  for  him,  as  an 
entity.  It  was  merely  a  street.  And  the 
little  town  was  not  an  entity.  It  was  merely 
where  he  lived.  He  went  behind  Buff  Miles 
and  the  snowplow  —  as  he  always  went  —  as  if 
space  had  been  created  for  folk  to  live  in  one 
at  a  time,  and  as  if  this  were  his  own  turn. 
When  he  reached  the  bend  from  the  Old 
Trail  to  the  road  where  the  factory  was,  he 


104  CHRISTMAS 

understood  at  last  that  he  had  been  hearing  a 
song  sung  over  a  great  many  times. 

"...  One  for  the  way  it  all  begun, 
Two  for  the  way  it  all  has  run, 
What  three'll  be  for  I  do  forget, 
But  what's  to  be  has  not  been  yet.  .  .  . 
So  holly  and  mistletoe, 
So  holly  and  mistletoe, 
So  holly  and  mistletoe, 
Over  and  over  and  over,  oh." 

Buff,  who  was  singing  it,  looked  over  his 
shoulder,  and  nodded. 

"They  said  you  can't  have  no  Christmas  on 
Christmas  Day,"  he  observed,  grinning,  "but  I 
ain't  heard  nothing  to  prevent  singing  Christ 
mas  carols  right  up  to  the  day  that  is  the  day." 

Ebenezer  halted. 

"How  old  are  you?"  he  abruptly  demanded 
of  Buff  —  whom  he  had  known  from  Buff's 
boyhood. 


CHRISTMAS  105 

"Thirty-three/7  said  Buff,  "dum  it." 

"You  and  Bruce  about  the  same  age,  ain't 
you?"  said  Ebenezer. 

Buff  nodded. 

"Well,"  said  Ebenezer,  "well  ..."  and 
stood  looking  at  him.  Malcolm  would  have 
been  his  age,  too. 

"Going  down  to  the  factory,  are  you?" 
Buff  said.  "Wait  a  bit.  I'll  hike  on  down 
ahead  of  you." 

He  turned  the  snowplow  down  the  factory 
road,  as  if  he  were  making  a  triumphal  prog 
ress,  fashioning  his  snow  borders  with  all  the 
freedom  of  some  sculpturing  wind  on  summer 
clouds. 

"One  for  the  way  it  all  begun, 
Two  for  the  way  it  all  has  run.  .  .  ." 

he  sang  to  the  soft  push  and  thud  and  clank  of 
his  going.    He  swept  a  circle  in  front  of  the  little 


106  CHRISTMAS 

house  that  was  the  factory  office,  as  if  he  had  pre 
pared  the  setting  for  a  great  event ;  and  Eben- 
ezer,  following  in  the  long,  bright  path,  stepped 
into  the  hall  of  the  house. 

For  thirty  years  he  had  been  accustomed  to 
enter  the  little  house  with  his  mind  ready  to 
receive  its  interior  of  desks  and  shelves  and 
safes  and  files.  To-day,  quite  unexpectedly,  as 
he  opened  the  door,  the  thing  that  was  in  his 
mind  was  a  hall  stair  with  a  red  carpet,  and  a 
parlour  adjoining  with  figured  stuff  at  the  win 
dows  and  a  coal  fire  in  the  stove.  .  .  .  And 
thirty-five  years  ago  it  had  been  that  way, 
when  he  and  his  wife  and  child  had  lived  in  the 
little  house  where  his  business  was  then  just 
starting  at  a  machine  set  up  in  the  woodshed. 
As  his  project  had  grown  and  his  factory  had 
arisen  in  the  neighbouring  lots,  the  family  had 
moved  farther  up  in  the  town.  Remembrance 
had  been  divorced  from  this  place  for  decades. 


CHRISTMAS  107 

To-day, 'without  warning,  it  waited  for  him  on 
the  threshold. 

He  had  asked  his  bookkeeper  to  meet  him 
there,  but  the  man  had  not  yet  arrived.  So 
Ebenezer  himself  kindled  a  fire  in  the  rusty 
office  stove,  in  the  room  where  the  figured  cur 
tains  had  been.  The  old  account  books  that  he 
wanted  were  not  here  on  the  shelves,  nor  in 
the  cupboards  of  the  cold  adjoining  rooms. 
They  dated  so  far  back  that  they  had  been 
filed  away  upstairs.  He  had  not  been  upstairs 
in  years,  and  his  first  impulse  was  to  send  his 
bookkeeper,  when  he  should  appear.  But 
this,  after  all,  was  not  Ebenezer's  way;  and 
he  went  up  the  stairs  himself. 

Each  upper  room  was  like  some  one  uncon 
scious  in  stupor  or  death,  and  still  as  distinct 
in  personality  as  if  in  some  ancient  activity. 
There  was  the  shelf  he  had  put  up  in  their  room, 
the  burned  place  on  the  floor  where  he  had 


io8  CHRISTMAS 

tipped  over  a  lamp,  tattered  shreds  of  the  paper 
she  had  hung  to  surprise  him,  the  little  store 
room  which  they  had  cleared  out  for  Malcolm 
when  he  was  old  enough,  and  whose  door  had 
had  to  be  kept  closed  because  innumerable 
uncaged  birds  lived  there.  .  .  . 

When  he  had  gone  through  the  piles  of 
account  books  in  a  closet  and  those  he  sought 
were  not  found  among  them,  he  remembered  the 
trunkful  up  in  the  tiny  loft.  He  let  down  from 
the  passage  ceiling  the  ladder  he  had  once 
hung  there,  and  climbed  up  to  the  little  roof 
recess. 

Light  entered  through  four  broken  panes  of 
skylight.  It  fell  in  a  faint  rug  on  the  dusty 
floor.  The  roof  sloped  sharply,  and  the 
trunks  and  boxes  had  been  pressed  back  to 
the  rim  of  the  place.  Ebenezer  put  his  hands 
out,  groping.  They  touched  an  edge  of  some 
thing  that  swayed.  He  laid  hold  of  it  and 


CHRISTMAS  109 

drew  it  out  and  set  down  on  the  faint  rug  of 
light  a  small  wooden  hobbyhorse. 

He  stood  staring  at  it,  remembering  it  as 
clearly  as  if  some  one  had  set  before  him  the 
old  white  gate  which  he  bestrode  in  his  own 
boyhood.  It  was  Malcolm's  hobbyhorse, 
dappled  gray,  the  tail  and  the  mane  missing 
and  the  paint  worn  off  —  and  tenderly  licked 
off  —  his  nose.  When  they  had  moved  to  the 
other  house,  he  had  bought  the  boy  a  pony, 
and  this  horse  had  been  left  behind.  Some 
thing  else  stirred  in  his  memory,  the  name  by 
which  Malcolm  had  used  to  call  his  hobbyhorse, 
some  ringing  name  .  .  .  but  he  had  forgotten. 
He  thrust  the  thing  back  where  it  had  been 
and  went  on  with  his  search  for  the  account 
books. 

By  the  time  he  had  found  them  and  had  got 
down  again  in  the  office,  the  bookkeeper  was 
there,  keeping  up  the  fire  and  uttering,  with 


1 10  CHRISTMAS 

some  acumen,  comments  on  the  obvious  aspects 
of  the  weather,  of  the-  climate,  of  the  visible 
universe.  The  bookkeeper  was  a  young  man, 
very  ready  to  agree  with  Ebenezer  for  the  sake 
of  future  favour,  but  with  the  wistfulness  of  all 
industrial  machines  constructed  by  men  from 
human  potentialities.  Also,  he  had  a  cough 
and  thin  hands  and  a  little  family  and  no 
job. 

.  "Get  to  work  on  this  book,"  Ebenezer 
bade  him ;  "it's  the  one  that  began  the 
business." 

The  man  opened  the  book,  put  it  to  his 
nearsighted  eyes,  frowned,  and  glanced  up 
at  Ebenezer. 

"I  don't  think  it  seems  .  .  .  M  he  began 
doubtfully. 

"Well,  don't  think,"  said  Ebenezer,  sharply; 
"that's  not  needful.  Read  the  first  entries." 

The  bookkeeper  read :  — 


THE    STILL  FIELDS    CAME 
THE  POINT  OF  FLAME" 


CHRISTMAS  in 

Picking  hops  (4  days)      ......    $1.00 

Sewing  (Mrs.  Shackell) .60 

Egg  money  (3!  dozen) 75 

Winning  puzzle 2.50 

$4.86 
Disbursed : 

Kitchen  roller $  .10 

Coffee  mill 50 

Shoes  for  M 1.25 

Water  colors  for  M.         25 

Suit  f or  M 2.00 

Gloves  —  me 50 

$4-75 
Cash  on  hand:    n  cents. 

The  bookkeeper  paused  again.  Ebenezer, 
frowning,  reached  for  the  book.  In  his  wife's 
fine  faded  writing  were  her  accounts  —  after 
the  eleven  cents  was  a  funny  little  face  with 
which  she  had  been  wont  to  illustrate  her 


112  CHRISTMAS 

letters.  Ebenezer  stared,  grunted,  turned  to 
the  last  page  of  the  book.  There,  in  bold 
figures,  the  other  way  of  the  leaf,  was  his 
own  accounting.  He  remembered  now  —  he 
had  kept  his  first  books  in  the  back  of  the 
account  book  that  she  had  used  for  the 
house. 

Ebenezer  glanced  sharply  at  his  bookkeeper. 
To  his  annoyance,  the  man  was  smiling  with 
perfect  comprehension  and  sympathy.  Eben 
ezer  averted  his  eyes,  and  the  bookkeeper 
felt  dimly  that  he  had  been  guilty  of  an  in 
delicacy  toward  his  employer,  and  hastened 
to  cover  it. 

"Family  life  does  cling  to  a  man,  sir,"  he 
said. 

"Do  you  find  it  so?"  said  Ebenezer,  dryly. 
"Read,  please." 

At  noon  Ebenezer  walked  home  alone  through 
the  melting  snow.  And  the  Thought  that  he 


CHRISTMAS  113 

did  not  think,  but  that  spoke  to  him  without 
his  knowing,  said :  — 

"Winning  a  puzzle  —  Two  Dollars  and  a 
half.  She  never  told  me  she  tried  to  earn  a 
little  something  that  way." 


VIII 

"IF  we  took  the  day  before  Christmas  an' 
had  it  for  Christmas,"  observed  Tab  Winslow, 
"would  that  hurt?" 

"Eat  your  oatmeal,"  said  Mis'  Winslow, 
in  the  immemorial  manner  of  adults. 

"Would  it,  would  it,  would  it?"  per 
sisted  Tab,  in  the  immemorial  manner  of 
youth. 

"And  have  Theophilus  Thistledown  for  din 
ner  that  day  instead  ?"  Mis'  Winslow  suggested 
with  diplomacy. 

On  which  Tab  ate  his  oatmeal  in  silence. 

But,  like  adults  immemorially,  Mis'  Winslow 
bore  far  more  the  adult  manner  than  its  heart. 
After  breakfast  she  stood  staring  out  the  pan 
try  window  at  the  sparrows  on  the  bird  box. 

114 


CHRISTMAS  115 

"It  looks  like  Mary  Chavah  was  going  to 
be  the  only  one  in  Trail  Town  to  have  any 
Christmas  after  all/'  she  thought,  "that  little 
boy  coming  to  her,  so." 

He  was  coming  week  after  next,  Mary  had 
said,  and  Mis'  Winslow  had  heard  no  word 
about  it  from  anybody  else.  When  "the 
biggest  of  the  work"  of  the  forenoon  was 
finished,  Mis'  Winslow  ran  down  the  road  to 
Ellen  Bourne's.  In  Old  Trail  Town  they 
always  speak  of  it  as  running  down,  or  in, 
or  over,  in  the  morning,  with  an  unconscious 
suiting  of  terms  to  informalities. 

Ellen  was  cleaning  her  silver.  She  had  "six 
of  each"  —  six  knives,  six  forks,  six  spoons, 
all  plated  and  seldom  used,  pewter  with 
black  handles  serving  for  every  day.  The  sil 
ver  was  cleaned  often,  though  it  was  never  on 
the  table,  save  for  company,  and  there  never 
had  been  any  company  since  Ellen  had  lost 


n6  CHRISTMAS 

her  little  boy  from  fever.  Having  no  artic- 
ulateness  and  having  no  other  outlet  for 
emotion,  she  fed  her  grief  by  small  abstentions : 
no  guests,  no  diversions,  no  snatches  of  song 
about  her  work.  Yet  she  was  sane  enough, 
and  normal,  only  in  dearth  of  sane  and  normal 
outlets  for  emotion,  for  energy,  for  personality, 
she  had  taken  these  strange  directions  for 
yet  unharnessed  forces. 

"Mercy,"  observed  Mis'  Winslow,  warm 
ing  her  hands  at  the  cooking  stove,  "you  got 
more  energy." 

"...  than  family,  I  guess  you  mean," 
Ellen  Bourne  finished.  Ellen  was  little  and 
fair,  with  slightly  drooping  head,  and  eye 
brows  curved  to  a  childlike  reflectiveness. 

"Well,  I  got  consider'ble  more  family  than 
I  got  energy,"  said  Mis'  Winslow,  "so  I  guess 
we  even  it  up.  Seven-under-fifteen  eats  up 
energy  like  so  much  air." 


CHRISTMAS  117 

"Hey,  king  and  country/7  said  Ellen's  old 
father,  whittling  by  the  fire,  "you  got  family 
enough,  Ellen.  You  got  your  hands  full  of 
us."  He  rubbed  his  hands  through  his  thin 
upstanding  silver  hair  on  his  little  pink  head, 
and  his  fine,  pink  face  took  on  the  look  of 
father  which  rarely  intruded,  now,  on  his 
settled  look  of  old  man. 

"I  donno  what  she'd  do,"  said  Ellen's 
mother,  "with  any  more  around  here  to  pick 
up  after.  We're  cluttered  up  enough,  as  it 
is."  She  was  an  old  lady  of  whose  outlines 
you  took  notice  before  your  attention  lay 
further  upon  her  —  angled  waist,  chin,  lips, 
forehead,  put  on  her  a  succession  of  zigzags. 
But  her  eyes  were  awake,  and  it  was  to  be 
seen  that  she  did  not  mean  what  she  said  and 
that  she  was  looking  anxiously  at  Ellen  in  the 
hope  of  having  deceived  her  daughter.  Ellen 
smiled  at  her  brightly,  and  was  not  deceived. 


n8  CHRISTMAS 

"I  keep  pretty  busy,"  she  said. 

Mis'  Abby  Winslow,  who  was  not  deceived 
either,  hastened  to  the  subject  of  Mary. 

"I  should  think  Mary  Chavah  had  enough 
to  do,  too,"  she  said,  "but  she's  going  to  take 
Lily's  little  boy.  Had  you  heard?" 

"No,"  Ellen  said,  and  stopped  shaving 
silver  polish. 

"He's  coming  in  two  weeks,"  Mis'  Winslow 
imparted;  "she  told  me  so  herself.  She's 
got  his  room  fixed  up  with  owls  on  the  wall 
paper.  She's  bought  him  a  washbasin  with 
a  rim  of  puppies,  and  a  red  stocking  cap. 
I  saw  her." 

"How  old  is  he?"  Ellen  asked,  and  worked 
again. 

"I  never  thought  to  ask  her,"  Mis'  Winslow 
confessed;  "he  must  be  quite  a  little  fellow. 
But  he's  coming  alone  from  some  place  out 
West." 


CHRISTMAS  119 

"Hey,  king  and  country/'  Ellen's  father 
said;  "I'd  hate  to  have  a  boy  come  here,  with 
my  head  the  way  it  is." 

"And  keeping  the  house  all  upset,"  Ellen's 
mother  said,  and  asked  Mis'  Winslow  some 
question  about  Mary;  and  when  she  turned 
to  Ellen  again,  "Why,  Ellen  Bourne,"  she 
said,  "you've  shaved  up  every  bit  of  that  clean 
ing  polish  and  we're  most  done  cleaning." 

Ellen  was  looking  at  Mis'  Winslow:  "If 
you  see  her,"  Ellen  said,  "you  ask  her  if  I 
can't  do  anything  to  help." 

Later  in  the  day,  happening  in  at  Mis' 
Mortimer  Bates's,  Mis'  Winslow  found  Mis' 
Moran  there  before  her,  and  asked  what  they 
had  heard  "about  Mary  Chavah."  Some 
thing  in  that  word  "about"  pricks  curiosity  its 
sharpest.  "Have  you  heard  about  Mary  Cha 
vah?"  "It's  too  bad  about  Mary  Chavah." 
"Isn't  it  queer  about  Mary  Chavah?"  —  each 


120  CHRISTMAS 

of  these  is  like  setting  flame  to  an  edge  of  tissue. 
Omit  "about"  from  the  language,  and  you 
abate  most  gossip.  At  Mis'  Winslow's  phrase, 
both  women's  eyebrows  curved  to  another  arc. 

Mis'  Winslow  told  them. 

"Ain't  that  nice?"  said  Mis'  Moran,  whole 
heartedly;  "I  couldn't  bring  up  another,  not 
with  my  back.  But  I'm  glad  Mary's  going 
to  know  what  it  is.  .  .  ." 

Mis'  Mortimer  Bates  was  glad,  too,  but 
being  by  nature  a  nonconformist,  she  took 
exception. 

"It's  an  awful  undertaking  for  a  single- 
handed  woman,"  she  observed. 

But  this  sort  of  thing  she  said  almost 
unconsciously,  and  the  other  two  women  re 
garded  it  with  no  more  alarm  than  any  other 

*• 

reflex. 

"It's  no  worse  starting  single-handed  than 
being  left  single-handed,"  offered  Mis'  Winslow 


CHRISTMAS  121 

somewhat  ambiguously.  "Lots  does  that's 
thrifty." 

"Seems  as  if  we  could  do  a  little  something 
to  help  her  get  ready,  seem's  though,"  Mis7 
Moran  suggested;  "I  donno  what." 

"I  thought  I'd  slip  over  after  supper  and 
ask  her,  "  Mis'  Winslow  said;  "maybe  I'd  best 
go  now  —  and  come  back  and  tell  you  what 
she  says." 

Mis'  Winslow  found  Mary  Chavah  sitting  by 
her  pattern  bookcase,  cutting  out  a  pattern. 
Mary's  face  was  flushed  and  her  eyes  were 
bright,  and  she  went  on  with  her  pattern, 
thrilled  by  it  as  by  any  other  creating. 

"I  just  thought  of  this,"  Mary  explained, 
looking  vaguely  at  her  visitor.  "It  come  to 
me  like  a  flash  when  I  was  working  on  Mis' 
Bates's  basque.  Will  you  wait  just  a  minute, 
and  then  I'll  explain  it  out  to  you." 

Without  invitation,  Mis'  Winslow  laid  aside 


122  CHRISTMAS 

her  coat  and  waited,  watching  Mary  curiously. 
She  was  cutting  and  folding  and  pinning  her 
tissue  paper,  oblivious  of  any  presence.  Alarm, 
suspense,  doubt,  solution,  triumph,  came  and 
went,  and  neither  woman  was  conscious  that 
the  flame  of  creation  burned  and  breathed  in 
the  room  as  truly  as  if  the  product  were  to  be 
acknowledged. 

"There!"  Mary  cried  at  last.  "See  it  — 
can't  you  see  it  ?  —  in  gray  wool  ?" 

It  was  the  pattern  for  a  boy's  topcoat, 
cunningly  cut  in  new  lines  of  seam  and  revers, 
with  a  pocket,  a  bit  of  braid,  a  line  of  buttons 
laid  in  as  delicately  as  the  factors  in  any  other 
good  composition.  Mis'  Winslow  inevitably 
recognized  its  utility,  exclaimed,  and  wondered. 

"Mary  Chavah  !  How  did  you  know  how 
to  do  things  for  children?" 

"How  did  you  know  how?"  Mary  inquired 
coolly. 


CHRISTMAS  123 

"Why,  I've  had  'em,"  Mis'  Winslow  offered 
simply. 

"Do  you  honestly  think  that  makes  any 
difference?"  Mary  asked. 

Mis'  Winslow  gasped,  in  the  immemorial 
belief  that  the  physical  basis  of  motherhood  is 
the  guarantee  of  both  spiritual  and  physical 
equipment. 

"Could you  have  cut  out  that  coat?"  Mary 
asked. 

Mis'  Winslow  shook  her  head.  She  was  of 
those  whose  genius  is  for  cutting  over. 

"Well,"  said  Mary,  "I  could.  It  ain't 
having  'em  that  teaches  you  to  do  for  'em. 
You  either  know  how,  or  you  don't  know  how. 
That's  all." 

Mis'  Winslow  reflected  that  she  could  never 
make  Mary  understand  —  though  any  mother, 
she  thought  complacently,  would  know  in  a 
minute.  The  cutting  of  the  coat  did  give  her 


1 24  CHRISTMAS 

pause;  but  then,  she  summed  it  up,  coat  in 
cluded,  "Mary  was  queer"  — and  let  it  go  at 
that. 

"I  didn't  know,"  Mis'  Winslow  said  then, 
"but  what  I  could  help  you  some  about  the 
little  boy's  coming.  Seven-under-fifteen  does 
teach  you  something,  you've  got  to  allow. 
Mebbe  I  could  tell  you  something,  now  and 
then.  Or  if  we  could  do  anything  to  help  you 
get  ready  for  him  ..." 

"Oh,"  said  Mary,  in  swift  penitence,  "thank 
you,  Mis'  Winslow.  After  he  comes,  maybe. 
But  these  things  now  I  don't  mind  doing. 
The  real  nuisance'll  come  afterwards,  I  s'pose." 

Mis'  Winslow  smiled  in  soft  triumph. 

"Nuisance!"  she  said.  "That's  what  I 
meant  comes  to  you  by  having  'em.  You 
don't  think  so  much  of  the  nuisance  part  as 
you  did  before." 

"Then   you   don't   look   the    thing   in    the 


CHRISTMAS  '125 

face/'  said  Mary,  calmly.  "That's  all  about 
that." 

"Well,"  Mis'  Winslow  said  pacifically, 
"when's  he  coming?" 

"A  week  from  Tuesday.  A  week  from  to 
morrow,"  Mary  told  her. 

Mis'  Winslow  looked  at  her  intently,  with 
the  light  of  calculation  in  her  narrowed 
eyes. 

"A  week  from  Tuesday,"  she  said.  "A  week 
from  Tuesday,"  she  repeated.  "A  week  from 
Tuesday!"  she  exclaimed.  "Why,  Mary 
Chavah.  That's  Christmas  Eve." 

It  was  some  matter  of  recipes  that  was  ab 
sorbing  Mis'  Bates  and  Mis'  Moran  when  Mis' 
Winslow  breathlessly  returned  to  them.  They 
were  deep  in  tradition,  and  in  method,  its 
buttonhole  relation.  During  the  weary  period 
when  nutrition  has  been  one  of  the  two  great 
problems  the  tremendous  impulse  that  has 


126  CHRISTMAS 

nourished  the  world  was  alive  in  the  faces  of 
the  two  women,  a  kind  of  creative  fire,  such 
as  had  burned  in  Mary  at  the  cutting  of 
her  pattern.  Asparagus  escalloped  with  toast 
crumbs  and  butter  was  for  the  moment  symbol 
of  all  humanity's  will  to  keep  alive. 

"Ladies,"  said  Mis'  Winslow,  with  no  other 
preface,  "what  do  you  think  ?  Mary  Chavah's 
little  boy  is  coming  from  Idaho  with  a  tag 
on,  and  when  do  you  s'pose  he's  going  to  get 
here?  Christmas  Eve." 

"Christmas  Eve,"  repeated  Mis'  Bates,  whose 
mind  never  lightly  forsook  old  ways  or  embraced 
a  contretemps;  "what  a  funny  time  to  travel." 

"Likely  catch  the  croup  and  be  down  sick 
on  Mary's  hands  the  first  thing,"  said  Mis' 
Moran.  "It's  a  pity  it  ain't  the  Spring  of  the 

«• 

year." 

Mis'  Winslow  looked  at  them  searchingly  to 
see  if  her  thought  too  far  outdistanced  theirs. 


CHRISTMAS  127 

"What  struck  me  all  of  a  heap,"  she  said, 
"is  his  getting  here  then.  That  night.  Christ 
mas  Eve." 

The  three  woman  looked  at  one  another. 

"That's  so,"  Mis'  Moran  said. 

"Him  — that  child,"  Mis'  Winslow  put  it, 
"get ting  here  Christmas  Eve,  used  to  Christmas 
all  his  life,  ten  to  one  knowing  in  his  head 
what  he  hopes  he'll  get.  And  no  Christmas. 
And  him  with  no  mother.  And  her  only  a 
month  or  so  dead." 

"Well,"  said  Mis'  Mortimer  Bates,  "it's 
too  bad  it's  happened  so.  But  it  has  happened 
so.  You  have  to  say  that  to  your  life  quite 
often,  I  notice.  I  don't  know  anything  to  do 
but  to  say  it  now." 

Mis'  Winslow  had  not  taken  off  her  cloak. 
She  sat  on  the  edge  of  her  chair,  with  her  hands 
deep  in  its  pockets,  her  black  knit  "fasci 
nator"  fallen  back  from  her  hair.  She  was 


128  CHRISTMAS 

looking  down  at  her  cloth  overshoes,  and  she 
went  on  speaking  as  if  she  had  hardly  heard 
what  Mis'  Bates  had  interposed. 

"He'll  get  in  on  the  express/'  she  said; 
"Mary  said  so.  She  don't  have  to  go  to  the 
City  to  meet  him.  The  man  he  travels  with 
is  going  to  put  him  on  the  train  in  the  City. 
The  little  fellow'll  get  here  after  dark.  After 
dark  on  Christmas  Eve." 

"  And  no  time  for  anybody  to  warn  him  that 
there  won't  be  any  Christmas  waiting  for  him," 
Mis'  Moran  observed  thoughtfully. 

"And  like  enough  he'll  bring  a  little  something 
for  Mary  for  a  present,"  Mis'  Winslow  went  on. 
"How'llshefeelto?" 

"Ain't  it  too  bad  it  ain't  last  year?"  Mis' 
Moran  mourned.  "Everything  comes  too  late 
or  too  soon  or  not  at  all  or  else  too  much  so, 
'seems  though." 

Mis'  Bates's  impulse  to  nonconformity  had 


CHRISTMAS  129 

not  prevented  her  forehead  from  being  drawn 
in  their  common  sympathy;  but  it  was  a 
sympathy  that  saw  no  practical  way  out  and 
existed  tamely  as  a  high  window  and  not  as 
a  wide  door. 

"Well,"  she  said,  "Mary  ain't  exactly  the 
one  to  see  it  so.  You'll  never  get  her  to  feel 
bad  about  anybody  not  having  a  Christmas. 
I  donno,  if  it  was  any  other  year,  as  she'd  be 
planning  any  different." 

"No,"  said  Mis'  Winslow,  thoughtfully, 
"Mary  won't  do  anything.  But  we  could." 

Mis'  Bates's  forehead  took  alarm  —  the 
alarm  of  the  sympathetic  hearer  who  is  chal 
lenged  to  be  doer. 

"Do?"  she  repeated.  "You  can't  go  back  on 
the  paper  at  this  late  day.  And  you  can't  give 
him  a  Christmas  and  every  other  of  our  chil 
dren  not  have  any  just  because  we're  their  par 
ents  and  still  living.  There  ain't  a  thing  to  do." 


130  CHRISTMAS 

Mis'  Winslow's  eyes  were  still  on  her  over 
shoes.  "I  don't  believe  there's  never  'not  a 
thing'  to  do/'  she  said,  "I  don't  believe  it." 

Mis'  Bates  looked  scandalized.  "  That's  non 
sense,"  she  said  sharply,  "and  it's  sacrilegious 
besides.  When  God  means  a  thing  to  happen, 
there's  not  a  thing  to  do.  What  about  earth 
quakes  and  —  and  cancers  ?" 

"I  don't  believe  he  ever  means  earthquakes 
and  cancers,"  said  Mis'  Winslow,  to  her  over 
shoes. 

"Prevent  'em,  then  !"  challenged  Mis'  Bates, 
triumphantly. 

Mis'  Winslow  looked  up.  Her  eyes  were 
shining  as  they  had  shone  sometimes  when  one 
of  her  seven-under-fifteen  had  given  its  first 
sign  of  consciousness  of  more  than  self. 

"I  believe  well  do  it  some  day,"  she  said. 
"  I  believe  there's  more  to  us  than  we've  got  any 
idea  of.  I  believe  there's  so  much  to  us  that 


CHRISTMAS  131 

one  of  us  that  found  out  about  it  and  told 
the  rest  would  get  hounded  out  of  town.  But 
even  now,  I  bet  there's  enough  to  us  to  do 
something  every  time  —  something  every  time, 
no  matter  what.  And  I  believe  there's  some 
thing  we  can  do  about  this  little  orphand 
boy's  Christmas,  if  we  nip  our  brains  on  to 
it  in  the  right  place." 

"Oh,  dear,"  said  Mis'  Moran,  "sometimes 
when  I  think  about  Christmas  I  almost  wish 
we  almost  hadn't  done  the  way  we're  going 
to  do." 

Mis'  Bates  stiffened. 

"Jane  Moran,"  she  said,  "do  you  think  it's 
right  to  go  head  over  heels  in  debt  to  celebrate 
the  birth  of  our  Lord  ?" 

"No,"  said  Mis'  Moran,  "I  don't.    But  — " 

"And  you  know  nobody  in  Old  Trail  Town 
could  afford  any  extravagance  this  year?" 

"Yes,"  said  Mis'  Moran,  "I  do.     Still—" 


132  CHRISTMAS 

"And  if  part  could  and  part  couldn't,  that 
makes  it  all  the  worse,  don't  it  ?" 

"I  know,"  said  Mis'  Moran,  "I  know." 

"Well,  then,"  said  Mis'  Bates  triumphantly, 
"we've  done  the  only  way  there  is  to  do. 
Land  knows,  I  wish  there  was  another  way. 
But  there  ain't." 

Mis'  Winslow  looked  up  from  her  overshoes. 

"I  don't  believe  there's  never  'no  other 
way,":  she  said.  "There's  always  another 
way  .  .  ." 

"Not  without  money,"  said  Mis'  Bates. 

"Money,"  Mis'  Winslow  said,  "money. 
That's  like  setting  up  one  day  of  peace  on  earth, 
good  will  to  men,  and  asking  admission  to  it." 

"Mis'  Winslow,"  said  Mis'  Moran,  sadly, 
"what's  the  use  of  saying  anything?  You 
know  as  well  as  I  do  that  Christmas  is  abused 
all  up  and  down  the  land,  and  made  a  day  of 
expense  and  extravagance  and  folks  over- 


CHRISTMAS  133 

spending  themselves.  And  we've  stopped  all 
that  in  Old  Trail  Town.  And  now  you're 
trying  to  make  us  feel  bad." 

"I  ain't,"  said  Mis'  Winslow,  "we  felt  bad 
about  it  already,  and  you  know  it.  I'm  glad 
we've  stopped  all  that.  But  I  wish't  we  had 
something  to  put  in  its  place.  I  wish't  we 
had." 

"What  in  time  are  them  children  doing?" 
said  Mis'  Moran,  abruptly. 

The  three  women  looked.  On  the  side  lawn, 
where  a  spreading  balsam  had  been  left  un- 
trimmed  to  the  ground,  stood  little  Emily 
Moran  and  Gussie  and  Bennet  and  Tab  and 
Pep.  And  the  four  boys  had  their  caps  in 
their  hands,  and  Gussie,  having  untied  her  own 
hood,  turned  to  take  off  little  Emily's.  The 
wind,  sweeping  sharply  round  the  corner  of 
the  house,  blew  their  hair  wildly  and  caught 
at  muffler  ends.  Mis'  Bates  and  Mis'  Moran, 


134  CHRISTMAS 

with  one  impulse,  ran  to  the  side  door,  and  Mis' 
Winslow  followed. 

"Emily,"  said  Mis7  Moran,  "put  on  your 
hood  this  minute." 

"Gussie,"  said  Mis7  Bates,  "put  on  your 
cap  this  instant  second.  What  you  got  it  off 
for?  And  little  Emily  doing  as  you  do  — 
I'm  surprised  at  you." 

The  children  consulted  briefly,  then  Pep 
turned  to  the  two  women,  by  now  coming  down 
the  path,  Mis7  Bates  with  her  apron  over  her 
head,  Mis7  Moran  in  her  shawl. 

"Please,77  said  Pep,  "it's  a  funeral.  An' 
we  thought  we7d  ought  to  take  our  caps  off 
till  it  gets  under.77 

"A  funeral,7'  said  Mis7  Bates.  "Who  you 
burying?77 

"It's  just  a  rehearsal  funeral,"  Pep  explained; 
"the  real  one's  going  to  be  Christmas.77 

By  now  the  two  women  were  restoring  hood 


CHRISTMAS  135 

and  stocking  cap  to  the  little  girls,  and  it  was 
Mis'  Winslow,  who  had  followed,  who  spoke 
to  Pep. 

"Who's  dead,  Pep  ?"  she  asked. 

Between  the  belief  of  "Who's  dead?"  and 
the  skepticism  of  "Who  you  burying?"  the 
child  was  swift  to  distinguish. 

"Sandy  Glaus,"  he  answered  readily. 

Mis'  Winslow  stood  looking  down  at  him. 
Pep  stepped  nearer. 

"We're  doing  it  for  little  Emily,"  he  said  con 
fidentially.  "She  couldn't  get  it  straight  about 
where  Sandy  Glaus  would  be  this  Christmas. 
The  rest  of  us  —  knew.  But  Emily's  little  —  so 
we  thought  we'd  play  bury  him  on  her  'count." 

Mis'  Bates,  who  had  not  heard,  turned  from 
Gussie. 

"Going  to  do  what  on  Christmas?"  she  ex 
claimed.  "You  ain't  to  do  a  thing  on  Christ 
mas.  Or  ain't  you  grown  up,  after  all  ?" 


136  CHRISTMAS 

"Well,  we  thought  a  Christmas  funeral 
wouldn't  hurt,"  interposed  Bennet,  defensively. 
"Can't  we  even  have  a  funeral  for  fun  on 
Christmas?"  he  ended,  aggrieved. 

"It's  Sandy  Claus's  funeral,"  observed  little 
Emily  putting  a  curl  from  her  face. 

"We're  goin'  dress  up  a  Sandy  Claus,  you 
know,"  Pep  added,  sotto  wee.  "It's  going  to 
be  right  after  breakfast,  Christmas." 

"Come  on,  come  ahead,  fellows,"  said  Ben- 
net;  "I'll  be  corpse.  Keep  your  lids  on.  I 
don't  mind.  Go  ahead,  sing." 

Already  Mis'  Winslow  was  walking  back  to 
the  house ;  the  other  two  women  overtook  her ; 
and  from  the  porch  they  heard  the  children 
begin  to  sing  :  — 

" Go  bury  Saint  Nicklis.  .  .  ." 
The  rest  was  lost  in  the  closing  of  the  door. 

Back  in  the  sitting  room  the  women  stood 
looking  at  one  another.  Mis'  Bates  was  frown- 


CHRISTMAS  137 

ing  and  all  Mis'  Moran's  expressions  were  on 
the  verge  of  dissolving ;  but  in  Mis'  Winslow's 
face  it  was  as  though  she  had  found  some 
new  way  of  consciousness. 

"Ladies,"  Mis'  Winslow  said,  "them  chil 
dren  are  out  there  pretending  to  bury  Santa 
Claus  —  and  so  are  we.  And  I  bet  we  can't 
any  of  us  do  it." 

In  the  room,  there  was  a  moment^  of  silence 
in  which  familiar  things  seemed  to  join  with 
their  way  of  saying,  "We've  been  keeping 
still  all  the  while  ! "  Then  Mis'  Winslow  pushed 
her  hair,  regardless  of  its  parting,  straight  back 
from  her  forehead,  —  a  gesture  with  which  she 
characterized  any  moment  of  stress. 

"Ladies,"  she  said,  "I  don't  want  we  should 
go  back  on  our  paper,  either.  But  mebbe 
there's  more  to  Christmas  than  it  knows  about 
—  or  than  we  know  about.  Mebbe  we  can 
do  something  that  won't  interfere  with  the 


138  CHRISTMAS 

paper  we've  all  signed,  and  yet  that'll  be  some 
thing  that  is  something.  Mebbe  they's  things 
to  use  that  ain't  never  been  used  yet.  .  .  . 
Oh,  I  donno.  Nor  I  guess  you  donno.  But 
let's  us  find  out!" 


IX 

CHRISTMAS  Week  came. 

Cities  by  thousands  made  preparation.  Great 
shops  took  on  vast  cargoes  of  silk  and  precious 
things  and  seemed  ready  to  sail  about,  dis 
tributing  gifts  to  the  town,  and  thought  better 
of  it,  and  let  folk  come  in  numbers  to  them  to 
pay  toll  for  what  they  took.  Banks  opened 
their  doors  and  poured  out,  now  a  little  trick 
ling  stream  of  pay  envelopes,  now  a  torrent 
of  green  and  gold.  Flower  stalls  drew  tribute 
from  a  million  pots  of  earth  where  miracles  had 
been  done.  Pastry  counters,  those  mock  com 
missariats,  delicately  masking  as  servants  to 
necessity,  made  ready  their  pretty  pretences  to 
nutrition.  The  woods  came  moving  in  — 

acres  of  living  green,  taken  in  their  sleep,  their 

139 


I40  CHRISTMAS 

roots  left  faithful  to  a  tryst  with  the  sap, 
their  tops  summoned  to  bear  an  hybrid  fruit 
age.  From  cathedrals  rose  the  voices  of  chil 
dren  now  singing  little  carols  and  hymns  in 
praise  of  the  Christ-child,  now  speaking  little 
verses  in  praise  of  the  saint,  Nicholas,  now 
clamouring  for  little  new  possessions.  And  afar 
from  the  fields  that  lay  empty  about  the  clus 
tered  roofs  of  towns  came  a  chorus  of  voices 
of  the  live  things,  beast  and  fowl,  being  offered 
up  in  the  gorgeous  pagan  rites  of  the  day. 

Hither  and  yonder  in  every  city  the  grown 
townsfolk  ran.  The  most  had  lists  of  names, 
—  Grace,  Margaret,  Laura,  Alice,  Miriam,  John, 
Philip,  Father,  Mother,  —  beautiful  names 
and  of  rich  portent,  so  that,  remembering  the 
time,  one  would  have  said  that  these  were 
entered  there  with  some  import  of  special 
comradeship,  of  being  face  to  face,  of  having 
realized  in  little  what  will  some  day  be  true 


CHRISTMAS  141 

in  large.  But  on  looking  closer,  the  lists  were 
found  to  have  quite  other  connotations :  as, 
Grace,  bracelet;  Margaret,  spangled  scarf; 
Laura,  chafing-dish;  Philip,  smoking  set; 
Father  (Memo :  Ask  mother  what  she  thinks 
he'd  like).  And  every  name,  it  seemed,  stood 
for  some  bestowal  of  new  property,  mostly  of 
luxuries,  and  chiefly  of  luxuries  of  decoration. 
And  the  minds  of  the  buying  adults  were  like 
lakes  played  upon  by  clouds  and  storm  birds 
and  lightning,  and,  to  be  sure,  many  stars  — 
but  all  in  unutterable  confusion. 

Also  from  the  cargo-laden  shops  there  came 
other  voices  in  thousands,  but  these  were  mostly 
answers.  And  when  one,  understanding  Christ 
mas,  listened  to  hear  what  part  in  it  these 
behind  the  counter  played,  he  heard  from  them 
no  voice  of  sharing  in  the  theory  of  peace,  or 
even  of  truce,  but  instead :  — 

"Two  a  yard  and  double  width.    Jewelry 


142  CHRISTMAS 

is  in  the  Annex.  Did  you  want  three  pairs  of 
each?  Veils  and  neckwear  three  aisles  over. 
Leather,  glassware,  baskets,  ribbons,  down 
the  store  beyond  the  notions.  Toys  and  dolls 
are  in  the  basement  —  toys  and  dolls  are  in  the 
basement.  Jewelry  is  in  the  Annex.  .  .  ." 

So  that  a  great  part  of  the  town  seemed  some 
strong  chorus  of  invocation  to  new  possessions. 

But  there  were  other  voices.  Whole  areas 
of  every  town  lay,  perforce,  within  the  days  of 
Christmas  Week  —  it  must  have  been  so,  for 
there  is  only  one  calendar  to  embrace  humanity, 
as  there  is  only  one  way  of  birth  and  breath  and 
death,  one  source  of  tears,  one  functioning  for 
laughter.  But  to  these  reaches  of  the  town  the 
calendar  was  like  another  thing,  for  though  it 
was  upon  them  in  name,  its  very  presence  was 
withdrawn.  In  those  ill-smelling  stairways  and 
lofts  there  was  little  to  divulge  the  imminence 
of  anything  other  than  themselves.  And 


CHRISTMAS  143 

wherever  some  echo  of  Christmas  Week  had 
crept,  the  wistfulness  or  the  lust  was  for  pos 
session  also ;  but  here  one  could  understand  its 
insistence.  So  here  the  voices  said  only,  "I 
wish  —  I  wish/'  and  "I  choose  this  —  and  this," 
at  windows;  or,  "If  I  had  back  my  nickel 
.  .  .  ."  "Don't  you  go  expecting  nothink!" 
And  over  these  went  the  whirr  of  machinery, 
beat  of  treadles,  throb  of  engines,  or  the  silence 
of  forced  idleness,  or  of  the  disease  of  derelic 
tion.  It  was  a  time  of  many  pagan  observ 
ances,  as  when  some  were  decked  in  precious 
stuffs  and  some  were  thrown  to  lions. 

To  all  these  in  the  towns  Christmas  Week 
came.  And  of  them  all  not  many  stood  silent 
and  looked  Christmas  Week  in  the  face.  Yet 
it  is  a  human  experience  that  none  is  meant  to 
die  without  sharing.  For  the  season  is  the  sym 
bol  of  what  happens  to  folk  if  they  claim  it. 

Christmas  is  the  time  of  withdrawal  of  most 


I44  CHRISTMAS 

material  life.  It  is  the  time  when  nature  sub 
tracts  the  externals,  hides  from  man  the  phe 
nomena  of  even  her  evident  processes.  Left 
alone,  his  thought  turns  inward  and  outward 
—  which  is  to  say,  it  lays  hold  upon  the  flowing 
force  so  slightly  externalized  in  himself.  If  he 
finds  in  his  own  being  a  thousand  obstructions, 
a  thousand  persons,  —  dogs,  sorcerers,  whore 
mongers,  —  he  will  try  to  escape  from  them  all, 
back  to  the  externals.  But  if  he  finds  there  a 
channel  which  the  substance  of  being  is  using, 
he  will  be  no  stranger,  but  a  familiar,  with  him 
self.  Only  when  the  channel  has  been  long 
cleared,  when  there  has  left  it  all  consciousness 
of  striving,  of  self  in  any  form,  only  when  he 
finds  himself  empty,  ready,  immaculate,  will 
he  have  the  divine  adventure.  For  it  is  then 
that  in  him  the  spirit  of  God  will  have  its  birth, 
then  that  he  will  first  understand  his  own  na 
ture  .  .  .  the  nature  of  being. 


CHRISTMAS  145 

Then  the  turn  of  the  year  comes  in,  the  year 
begins  to  mount.  Birth  is  in  it,  growth  is  in 
it,  Spring  is  in  it.  Sometime,  away  back  in 
beginnings,  they  knew  this.  They  knew  that 
the  time  of  the  Winter  solstice  is  in  some  strange 
fashion  the  high  moment  of  the  year,  as  the 
beginning  of  new  activity  in  nature  and  in  the 
gods.  They  solemnized  the  return  of  the  fiery 
sun  wheel;  they  traced  in  those  solstice  days 
the  operations  on  earth  of  Odin  and  Berchta. 
They  knew  in  themselves  a  thing  they  could  not 
name.  And  when  the  supreme  experience  took 
place  in  Christ,  they  made  the  one  experience 
typify  the  other,  and  became  conscious  of  the 
divine  nature  of  this  nativity.  So,  by  the  illu- 
minati,  the  prophets,  the  adepts,  the  time  that 
followed  was  yearly  set  aside  —  forty  days  of 
dwelling  within  the  temple  of  self,  forty  days 
of  reverence  for  being,  of  consciousness  of  new 
birth.  Then  the  emergence,  then  the  apothe- 


146  CHRISTMAS 

osis  of  expression  typifying  and  typified  by 
Spring  —  the  time  when  bursting,  pressing  life 
almost  breaks  bounds,  when  birth  and  the 
impulse  to  birth  are  in  every  form  of  life,  with 
out  and  within.  These  festivals  are  not  arbi 
trary  in  date.  They  grow  out  of  the  universal 
experience. 

Is  it  not  then  cause  for  stupefaction  that 
this  time  of  "divine  bestowal"  should  have 
become  so  physical  a  thing  ?  From  the  ancient 
perception,  to  have  slipped  into  a  sense  of  annual 
social  comradeship  and  good  will  and  peace 
was  natural  and  fine  —  to  live  in  the  little 
what  will  some  day  be  true  in  the  large.  But 
from  this  to  have  plunged  down  into  a  time  of 
frantic  physical  bestowals,  of  " present  trading/' 
of  lists  of  Grace  and  Margaret  and  Philip,  of 
teeming  shops  with  hunting  and  hunted  crea 
tures  within,  of  sacrificial  trees  and  beasts,  of  a 
sovereign  sense  of  good  for  me  and  mine  and  a 


CHRISTMAS  147 

shameless  show  of  Lord  and  Lady  Bountiful 
.  .  .  how  can  that  have  come  about,  how  can 
the  great  festival  have  been  so  dishonoured  ? 

Not  all  dishonoured,  for  within  it  is  its 
own  vitality  which  nothing  can  dishonour. 
Through  all  the  curious  variations  which  it  re 
ceives  at  our  hands,  something  shines  and  sings : 
self-giving,  joy  giving,  a  vast,  dim  upflicker- 
ing  on  humanity  of  what  this  thing  really  is 
that  it  seeks  to  observe,  this  thing  that  grips 
men  so  that  no  matter  what  they  are  about, 
they  will  drop  it  at  the  touch  of  the  gong 
and  turn  to  some  expression,  however  crooked 
and  thwarted,  of  the  real  spirit  of  the  time.  If 
in  war,  then  bayonets  are  stacked  and  holly- 
wreathed,  and  candles  stuck  on  each  point ! 
If  at  sea,  some  sailor  climbs  out  on  the  bow 
sprit  with  a  wreath  of  green.  If  on  the  west 
ern  plains,  a  turkey  wishbone  for  target  will 
make  the  sport,  at  fifty  paces ;  if  at  home,  some 


148  CHRISTMAS 

great  extravagance  or  some  humble  gift  or 
some  poignant  wish  will  point  the  day;  if  at 
church,  then  mass  and  carol ;  in  certain  hearts, 
reverence,  —  everywhere  the  time  takes  hold 
of  folk  and  receives  whatever  of  greatness  or 
grotesqueness  they  choose  to  give  it.  ...  So, 
too,  the  actual  and  vital  experience  which  it 
brings  to  humanity  is  universal,  is  offered 
with  cosmic  regularity,  cannot  be  escaped. 
Through  all  the  tumult  of  the  time,  Christmas 
Week  and  the  time  that  lies  near  to  it  is  always 
waiting  to  claim  its  own,  to  take  to  itself  those 
who  will  not  be  deceived,  who  see  in  the  stu 
pendous  yearly  pageant  only  the  usual  spec 
tacle  of  humanity  trying  to  say  divine  things 
in  terms  of  things  physical,  because  the  time 
for  the  universal  expression  is  not  yet  come. 

When  that  time  comes  .  .  .  when  the  time  of 
the  worship  of  things  shall  be  past ;  when  the 
tribal  sense  of  holiday  shall  have  given  place 


CHRISTMAS  149 

to  the  family  sense,  and  that  family  shall  be 
mankind ;  when  shall  never  be  seen  the  anom 
aly  of  celebrating  in  a  glorification  of  little 
family  tables  —  whose  crumbs  fall  to  those 
without  —  the  birth  of  him  who  preached 
brotherhood;  and  the  mockery  of  observing 
with  wanton  spending  the  birth  of  him  who  had 
not  where  to  lay  his  head ;  when  the  rudiments 
of  divine  perception,  of  self -perception,  of  social 
perception,  shall  have  grown  to  their  next  es 
tate;  when  the  area  of  consciousness  shall  be 
extended  yet  farther  toward  the  outermost; 
when  that  new  knowledge  with  which  the  air  is 
charged  shall  let  man  begin  to  know  what  he  is 
.  .  .  when  that  time  comes,  they  will  look  back 
with  utmost  wonder  at  our  uncouth  gropings  to 
note  and  honour  something  whose  import  we  so 
obscurely  discern ;  but  perhaps,  too,  with  won 
der  that  so  much  of  human  love  and  divining 
should  shine  for  us  through  the  mists  we  make. 


Two  days  before  Christmas  Ellen  Bourne 
went  through  the  new-fallen  snow  of  their 
wood  lot.  Her  feet  left  scuffled  tracks  clouded 
about  by  the  brushing  of  her  gown's  wet  hem 
and  by  a  dragging  corner  of  shawl.  She 
came  to  a  little  evergreen  tree,  not  four  feet 
tall,  with  low-growing  boughs,  and  she  stood 
looking  at  it  until  her  husband,  who  was 
also  following  the  snow-filled  path,  overtook 
her. 

" Matthew,"  she  said  then,  "will  you  cut  me 
that?" 

Matthew  Bourne  stood  with  his  ax  on  his 
shoulder  and  looked  a  question  in  slow  prep 
aration  to  ask  one. 

150 


"THE  CHILDREN  BEGAN  TO  SING  'GO  BURY 
SAINT  NICKLIS'" 


, 

• 


•        •        •       •  •  •  .       -     .     .  • 


CHRISTMAS  151 

"I  just  want  it,"  she  said;  "I've  —  took  a 
notion." 

He  said  that  she  had  a  good  many  notions,  it 
seemed  to  him.  But  he  cut  the  little  tree,  with 
casual  ease  and  no  compunctions,  and  they 
dragged  it  to  their  home,  the  soft  branches 
patterning  the  snow  and  obscuring  their 
footprints. 

"It's  like  real  Christmas  weather,"  Ellen 
said.  "They  can't  stop  that  coming,  anyhow." 

In  the  kitchen  Ellen's  father  sat  before  the 
open  oven  door  of  the  cooking  stove,  letting 
the  snow  melt  from  his  heavy  boots. 

"Hey,"  he  said,  "I  was  beginning  to  think 
you'd  forgot  about  supper.  What  was  in  the 
trap?" 

At  once  Ellen  began  talking  rapidly.  "Oh," 
she  said,  "we'll  have  some  muffins  to-night, 
father.  The  kind  you  like,  with  — " 

"Well,  what  was  in  the  trap?"  the  old  man 


152  CHRISTMAS 

demanded  peevishly.  "Why  don't  you  an 
swer  back  ?  What  was,  Mat  ?  " 

Matthew,  drying  his  ax  blade,  looked  at  it 
with  one  eye  closed. 

"Rabbit/7  he  said. 

"Where  is  it?"  her  father  demanded. 

"It  was  a  young  one  —  not  as  big  as  your 
fist,"  Ellen  said.  "I  let  it  out  before  he  got 
there.  Where's  mother  ?  " 

"Just  because  a  thing's  young,  it  ain't  holy 
water,"  the  old  man  complained.  "Last  time 
it  was  a  squirrel  you  let  go  because  it  was 
young  —  it's  like  being  spendthrift  with 
manna  ...  "  he  went  on. 

Ellen's  mother  appeared,  gave  over  to  Ellen 
the  supper  preparations,  contented  herself  with 
auxiliary  offices  of  china  and  butter  getting, 
and  talked  the  while,  pleased  that  she  had  some 
thing  to  disclose. 

"Ben  Helders  stopped  in,"  she  told.     "He's 


CHRISTMAS  153 

going  to  the  City  to-morrow.  What  do  you 
s'pose  after  ?  A  boy.  He's  going  to  take  him 
to  bring  up  and  work  on  the  farm." 

"Where's  he  going  to  get  the  boy?"  Ellen 
asked. 

Her  mother  did  not  know,  but  Mrs.  Helders 
was  going  to  have  a  new  diagonal  and  she 
wanted  the  number  of  Ellen's  pattern.  Ben 
would  stop  for  it  that  night. 

Evenings  their  kitchen  was  a  sitting  room, 
and  when  the  supper  had  been  cleared  away 
and  the  red  cotton  spread  covered  the  table, 
Ellen  asked  her  husband  to  bring  in  the  little 
tree.  She  found  a  cracker  box,  handily  cut 
a  hole  with  a  cooking  knife,  and  set  up  the 
little  tree  by  the  kitchen  window. 

"What  under  the  canopy  — -  "  said  her 
mother,  her  voice  cracking. 

"Oh,  something  to  do  in  the  evening,"  Ellen 
answered.  "Father's  going  to  pop  me  some 


154  CHRISTMAS 

corn  to  trim  it  with;  aren't  you,  father? 
Mother,  why  don't  you  get  you  a  good  big 
darning  needle  and  string  what  he  pops?" 

"It'll  make  a  lot  of  litter,"  said  her  mother, 
but  she  brought  the  needle,  for  something  to  do. 

"Hey,  king  and  country,"  said  her  father; 
"I'd  ought  to  have  somebody  here  to  shell  it 
for  me." 

"Who  you  trimming  up  a  tree  for?"  her 
mother  demanded;  "I  thought  they  wasn't 
to  be  any  in  town  this  year." 

"It  ain't  Christmas  yet,"  Ellen  said  only. 
"I  guess  it  won't  do  any  hurt  two  days 
before." 

While  the  two  worked,  Ellen  went  to  the 
cupboard  drawer,  and  from  behind  her  pile  of 
kitchen  towels  she  drew  out  certain  things: 
walnuts,  wrapped  in  shining  yeast  tinsel  and 
dangling  from  red  yarn;  wishbones  tied  with 
strips  of  bright  cloth ;  a  tiny  box,  made  like  a 


CHRISTMAS  155 

house,  with  rudely  cut  doors  and  windows; 
eggshells  penciled  as  faces;  a  handful  of  pea 
nut  owls;  a  glass-stoppered  bottle;  a  long 
necklace  of  buttonhole  twist  spools.  A  cer 
tain  blue  paper  soldier  doll  that  she  had  made 
was  upstairs,  but  the  other  things  she  brought 
and  fastened  to  the  tree. 

Her  husband  smoked  and  uneasily  watched 
her.  He  saw  somewhat  within  her  plan,  but 
he  was  not  at  home  there.  "If  the  boy  had 
lived  and  had  been  up-chamber  asleep  now," 
he  thought  once,  "it'd  be  something  like,  to 
go  trimming  up  a  tree.  But  this  way — " 

"What  you  leaving  the  whole  front  of  the 
tree  bare  for?"  her  mother  asked. 

"The  blue  paper  soldier  goes  there.  I  want 
it  should  see  the  blue  paper  soldier  first  thing 
.  .  .  5  Ellen  said,  and  stopped  abruptly. 

"You  talk  like  you  was  trimming  the  tree 
for  somebody,"  her  mother  observed,  aggrieved. 


156  CHRISTMAS 

"Maybe  something  might  look  in  the  win 
dow  —  going  by,"  Ellen  said. 

"Get  in  there!  Get  your  heads  in  there, 
ye  beggars  !"  said  the  old  man  to  the  popcorn. 
"I'd  ought  to  have  somebody  here  to  pick  up 
them  shooting  kernels/'  he  complained. 

In  a  little  while,  with  flat-footed  stamping, 

Ben  Helders  came  in.     When  he  had  the  pat- 

/ 

tern  number,  by  laborious  copying  against  the 
wall  under  the  bracket  lamp,  Matthew  said  to 
him:  — 

"Going  to  get  a  boy  to  work  out,  are  you?" 

Helders  laughed  and  shifted. 

"He's  going  to  work  by  and  by,"  he  said. 
"We  allow  to  have  him  to  ourselves  a  spell 
first." 

"Keep  him  around  the  house  till  Spring?" 

"More,"  said  Helders.  "You  see,"  he  added, 
"it's  like  this  with  us  ...  family  all  gone,  all 
married,  and  got  their  own.  We  figured  to  get 


CHRISTMAS  157 

hold  of  a  little  shaver  and  have  some  comfort 
with  him  before  he  goes  to  work,  for  life." 

"Adopt  him?"  said  Matthew,  curiously. 

"That's  pretty  near  it,"  Helders  admitted. 
"We've  got  one  spoke  for  at  the  City  Orphand 
Asylum." 

Ellen  Bourne  turned.  "How  old?"  she 
asked. 

"Around  five  —  six,  we  figure."  Helders 
said  it  almost  sheepishly. 

Ellen  stood  facing  the  men,  with  the  white 
festoons  of  popcorn  in  her  hands. 

"Matthew,"  she  said,  "let  him  bring  us  one." 

Matthew  stared.  "You  mean  bring  us  a 
boy?"  he  asked. 

"  I  don't  care  which  —  girl  or  boy.  Anything 
young,"  Ellen  said. 

"Good  Lord,  Ellen,"  Matthew  said,  with 
high  eyebrows,  "ain't  you  got  your  hands  full 
enough  now  ?  " 


158  CHRISTMAS 

Ellen  Bourne  lifted  her  hands  slightly  and 
let  them  fall.  "No,"  she  answered. 

The  older  woman  looked  at  her  daughter, 
and  now  first  she  was  solicitous,  as  a  mother. 

"Ellen,"  she  said,  "you  have,  too,  got  your 
hands  full.  You're  wore  out  all  the  time." 

"That's  it,"  Ellen  said,  "and  I'm  not  wore 
out  with  the  things  I  want  to  do." 

"Hey,  king  and  country!"  the  old  man 
cried,  upsetting  the  popper.  "Don't  get  a 
child  around  here  underfoot.  I'm  too  old.  I 
deserve  grown  folks.  My  head  hurts  me  — " 

"Matthew,"  said  Ellen  to  her  husband, 
"let  Helders  bring  us  one.  To-morrow  —  for 
Christmas,  Mat!" 

Matthew  looked  slowly  from  side  to  side. 
It  seemed  incredible  that  so  large  a  decision 
should  lie  with  a  man  so  ineffectual. 

"  'Seems  like  we'd  ought  to  think  about  it  a 
while  first,"  he  said  weakly. 


CHRISTMAS  159 

"Think about  it  P'saidEllen.  "When haven't 
I  thought  about  it?  When  have  I  thought 
about  anything  else  but  him  we  haven't  got 
any  more?" 

"Ellen!"  the  mother  mourned,  "you  don't 
know  what  you're  taking  on  yourself — " 

"Hush,  mother,"  Ellen  said  gently;  "you 
don't  know  what  it  is.  You  had  me." 

She  faced  Helders.  "Will  you  bring  two 
when  you  come  back  to-morrow  night?"  she 
said;  "and  one  of  them  for  us ?" 

Helders  looked  sidewise  at  Matthew,  who  was 
fumbling  at  his  pipe. 

"Wouldn't  you  want  to  see  it  first,  now?" 
Helders  temporized.  "And  a  girl  or  a  boy, 
now?" 

"No  —  I  wouldn't  want  to  see  it  first  —  I 
couldn't  bear  to  choose.  One  healthy  —  from 
healthy  parents  —  and  either  girl  or  boy," 
Ellen  said,  and  stopped.  "The  nicest  tree 


160  CHRISTMAS 

thing  I've  made  is  for  a  boy,"  she  owned. 
"It's  a  paper  soldier.  ...  I  made  these  things 
for  fun,"  she  added  to  Helders. 

For  the  first  time  Helders  observed  the 
tree.  Then  he  looked  in  the  woman's  face. 
"I'll  fetch  out  a  boy  for  you  if  you  say  so," 
he  said. 

"Then  do,"  she  bade. 

When  the  four  were  alone  again,  Mat  sat 
looking  at  the  floor.  "Every  headlong  thing 
I've  ever  done  I've  gone  headlong  over,"  he 
said  gloomily. 

Ellen  took  a  coin  from  the  clock  shelf. 
"When  Ben  goes  past  to-morrow,"  she  merely 
said,  "you'll  likely  see  him.  Have  him  get 
some  little  candles  for  the  tree." 

"My  head  hurts  me,"  the  old  man  gave  out; 
"this  ain't  the  place  for  a  great  noisy  boy." 

Ellen  put  her  hand  on  his  shoulder  almost 
maternally. 


CHRISTMAS  161 

"See,  dear,"  she  said,  "then  you'd  be  grand 
father." 

"Hey?"  he  said;  "not  if  it  was  adopted,  I 
wouldn't." 

"Why,  of  course.  That  would  make  it  ours 
—  and  yours.  See,"  she  cried,  "youVe  been 
stringing  popcorn  for  it  already,  and  you  didn't 
know!" 

"Be  grandfather,  would  I?"  said  the  old 
man.  "Would  I?  Hey,  king  and  country! 
Grandfather  again." 

Ellen  was  moving  about  the  kitchen  lightly, 
with  that  manner,  which  eager  interest  brings, 
of  leaving  only  half  footprints. 

"Come  on,  mother,"  she  said,  "we  must  get 
the  popcorn  strung  for  sure,  now  !" 

The  mother  looked  up  at  the  tree.  "Seems 
as  if,"  she  said,  wrinkling  her  forehead,  "I  used 
to  make  pink  tarleton  stockings  for  your  trees 
and  fill  'em  with  the  corn.  I  donno  but  I've 


162  CHRISTMAS 

got  a  little  piece  of  pink  tarleton  somewheres 
in  my  bottom  drawer.  .  .  .  3 

.  .  .  Next  night  they  had  the  bracket  lamp 
and  the  lamp  on  the  shelf  and  the  table  hand 
lamp  all  burning.  The  little  tree  was  gay  with 
the  white  corn  and  the  coloured  trifles.  The 
kitchen  seemed  to  be  centering  in  the  tree,  as 
if  the  room  had  been  concerned  long  enough 
with  the  doings  of  these  grown  folk  and  now 
were  looking  ahead  to  see  who  should  come  next. 
It  was  the  high  moment  of  immemorial  expect 
ancy,  when  those  who  are  alive  turn  the  head 
to  see  who  shall  come  after. 

"What  you  been  making  all  day,  daddy?" 
Ellen  asked,  tense  at  every  sound  from 
without. 

Her  father,  neat  in  his  best  clothes,  blew 
away  a  last  plume  of  shaved  wood  and  held 
out  something. 

"I  just  whittled  out  a  kind  of   a  clothespin 


CHRISTMAS  163 

man,"  he  explained.  "  I  made  one  for  you,  once, 
and  you  liked  it  like  everything.  Mebbe  a 
boy  won't?"  he  added  doubtfully. 

"Oh,  but  a  boy  will !"  Ellen  cried,  and  tied 
the  doll  above  the  blue  paper  soldier. 

"Hadn't  they  ought  to  be  here  pretty 
soon?"  Matthew  asked  nervously.  "Where's 
mother?" 

"She's  watching  from  the  front  room  win 
dow,"  Ellen  answered. 

Once  more  Helders  came  stamping  on  the 
kitchen  porch,  but  this  time  there  was 
a  patter  of  other  steps,  and  Ellen  caught 
open  the  door  before  he  summoned.  Helders 
stepped  into  the  room,  and  with  him  was  a 
little  boy. 

"This  one?"  Ellen  asked,  her  eyes  alive  with 
her  eagerness. 

But  Helders  shook  his  head. 

"Mis'  Bourne,"  he  said,  "I'm  real  dead  sorry. 


1 64  CHRISTMAS 

They  wa'n't  but  the  one.  Just  the  one  we'd 
spoke  for." 

"One!"  Ellen  said;  "you  said  Orphan  Asy 
lum." 

"There's  only  the  one,"  Helders  repeated. 
"The  others  is  little  bits  of  babies,  or  else 
spoke  for  like  ours  —  long  ago.  It  seems  they 
do  that  way.  But  I  want  you  should  do  some 
thing  :  I  want  you  and  Matthew  should  take 
this  one.  Mother  and  I  —  are  older  .  .  . 
we  ain't  set  store  so  much  ..." 

Ellen  shook  her  head,  and  made  him  know, 
with  what  words  she  could  find,  that  it  could 
not  be  so.  Then  she  knelt  and  touched  at  the 
coat  of  the  child,  a  small  frightened  thing,  with 
cap  too  large  for  him  and  one  mitten  lost.  But 
he  looked  up  brightly,  and  his  eyes  stayed  on 
the  Christmas  tree.  Ellen  said  little  things 
to  him,  and  went  to  take  down  for  him  some 
trifle  from  the  tree. 


CHRISTMAS  165 

"I'm  just  as  much  obliged,"  she  said  quietly 
to  Helders.  "I  never  thought  of  there  not 
being  enough.  We'll  wait." 

Helders  was  fumbling  for  something. 

"Here's  your  candles,  I  thought  you  might 
want  them  for  somethin'  else,"  he  said,  and 
turned  to  Matthew:  "And  here's  your  quar 
ter.  I  didn't  get  the  toy  you  mentioned. 
I  thought  you  wouldn't  want  it,  without  the 
little  kid." 

Matthew  looked  swiftly  at  Ellen.     He  had  * 
not  told  her  that  he  had  sent  by  Helders  for  a 
toy.     And  at  that  Ellen  crossed  abruptly  to 
her  husband,  and  she  was  standing  there  as 
they  let  Helders  out,  with  the  little  boy. 

Ellen's  father  pounded  his  knee. 

"But  how  long'll  we  have  to  wait?  How 
long '11  we  have  to  wait?"  he  demanded 
shrilly.  "King  and  country,  why  didn't  some 
body  ask  him  that  ?" 


166  CHRISTMAS 

Matthew  tore  open  the  door. 

"Helders  !"  he  shouted,  "how  long  did  they 
say  we'd  have  to  wait  ?" 

"Mebbe  only  a  week  or  two  —  mebbe 
longer,"  Helders'  voice  came  out  of  the  dark. 
"They  couldn't  tell  me." 

Ellen's  mother  stood  fastening  up  a  fallen 
tinsel  walnut. 

"Let's  us  leave  the  tree  right  where  it  is," 
she  said.  "Even  with  it  here,  we  won't  have 
enough  Christmas  to  hurt  anything." 


XI 

ON  that  morning  of  the  day  before  Christ 
mas,  Mary  Chavah  woke  early,  while  it  was 
yet  dark.  With  closed  eyes  she  lay,  in  the  grip 
of  a  dream  that  was  undissipated  by  her  waking. 
In  the  dream  she  had  seen  a  little  town  lying 
in  a  hollow,  lighted  and  peopled,  but  without 
foundation. 

"It  isn't  born  yet,"  they  told  her,  who  looked 
with  her,  "and  the  people  are  not  yet  born." 

"Who  is  the  mother?"  she  had  asked,  as  if 
everything  must  be  born  of  woman. 

"You,"  they  had  answered. 

On  which  the  town  had  swelled  and  rounded 
and  swung  in  a  hollow  of  cloud,  globed  and 
shining,  like  the  world. 

"You,"  they  had  kept  on  saying. 
167 


i68  CHRISTMAS 

The  sense  that  she  must  bear  and  mother  the 
thing  had  grasped  her  with  all  the  sickening 
force  of  dream  fear.  And  when  the  dream 
slipped  into  the  remembrance  of  what  the  day 
would  bring  her,  the  grotesque  terror  hardly 
lessened,  and  she  woke  to  a  sense  of  oppression 
and  coming  calamity  such  as  not  even  her  night 
of  decision  to  take  the  child  had  brought  to  her, 
a  weight  as  of  physical  faintness  and  sickness. 

"I  feel  as  if  something  was  going  to  happen," 
she  said,  over  and  over. 

She  was  wholly  ignorant  that  in  that  week 
just  passed  the  word  had  been  liberated  and 
had  run  round  Old  Trail  Town  in  the  happiest 
open  secrecy :  — 

".  .  .  coming  way  from  Idaho,  with  a  tag 
on,  Christmas  Eve.  We  thought  if  everybody 
could  call  that  night  —  just  run  into  Mary's, 
you  know,  like  it  was  any  other  night,  and  take 
in  a  little  something  to  eat  —  no  presents,  you 


CHRISTMAS  169 

know  .  .  .  oh,  of  course,  no  presents !  Just 
supper,  in  a  basket.  We'd  all  have  to  eat  some 
where.  It  won't  be  any  Christmas  celebration, 
of  course  —  oh,  no,  not  with  the  paper  signed 
and  all.  But  just  for  us  to  kind  of  meet 
and  be  there,  when  he  gets  off  the  train  from 
Idaho." 

"Just  .  .  .  like  it  was  any  other  night." 
That  was  the  part  that  abated  suspicion.  In 
deed,  that  had  been  the  very  theory  on  which 
the  nonobservance  of  Christmas  had  been 
based :  the  day  was  to  be  treated  like  any 
other  day.  And,  obviously,  on  any  other  day 
such  a  simple  plan  as  this  for  the  welcoming 
of  a  little  stranger  from  Idaho  would  have  gone 
forward  as  a  matter  of  course.  Why  deny  him 
this,  merely  because  the  night  of  his  arrival 
chanced  to  be  Christmas  Eve  ?  When  Christ 
mas  was  to  be  treated  exactly  as  any  other 
day? 


I  yo  CHRISTMAS 

If,  in  the  heart  of  Mis'  Abby  Winslow,  where 
the  plan  had  originated,  it  had  originated  side 
by  side  with  the  thought  that  the  point  of  the 
plan  was  the  incidence  of  Christmas  Eve,  she 
kept  her  belief  secret.  The  open  argument  was 
unassailable,  and  she  contented  herself  with 
that.  Even  Simeon  Buck,  confronted  with  it, 
was  silent. 

"Coin7  back  on  the  paper,  are  you?"  he 
had  at  first  said,  "and  hev  a  celebration?" 

"Celebration  of  what?"  Mis'  Winslow  de 
manded;  "celebration  of  that  little  boy  get 
ting  here  all  alone,  'way  from  Idaho.  And  we'd 
celebrate  that  any  other  night,  wouldn't  we? 
Of  course  we  would.  Our  paper  signing  don't 
call  for  us  to  give  everybody  the  cold  shoulder 
as  I  know  of,  just  because  it's  Christmas  or 
Christmas  Eve,  either." 

"No,"  Simeon  owned,  "of  course  it  don't. 
Of  course  it  don't." 


CHRISTMAS  171 

As  for  Abel  Ames,  he  accepted  the  proposal 
with  an  alacrity  which  he  was  put  to  it  to  con 
ceal. 

"So  do,"  he  said  heartily,  "so  do.  I  guess 
we  can  go  ahead  just  like  it  was  a  plain  day  o' 
the  week,  can't  we?" 

"Hetty,"  he  said  to  his  wife,  whom  that 
noon  he  went  through  the  house  to  the  kitchen 
expressly  to  tell,  "can  you  bake  up  a  basket 
of  stuff  to  take  over  to  Mary  Chavah's  next 
Tuesday  night  ?  " 

She  looked  up  from  the  loaf  she  was  cutting, 
the  habitual  wonder  of  her  childish  curved 
lashes  accented  by  her  sudden  curving  of  eye 
brows. 

"Next  Tuesday?"  she  said,  "Why,  that's 
Christmas  eve! " 

Abel  explained,  saying,  "  What  of  that  ?"  and 
trying  to  speak  indifferently  but,  in  spite  of 
himself,  shining  through. 


172  CHRISTMAS 

"Well,  that's  kind  of  nice  to  do,  ain't  it?" 
she  answered. 

"My,  yes,"  Abel  said,  emphatically,  "It's 
a  thing  to  do  —  that's  the  thing  to  do." 

It  was  Mis'  Mortimer  Bates,  the  noncon 
formist  by  nature,  in  whom  doubts  came  near 
est  to  expression. 

"I  don't  know,"  she  said,  "it  kind  of  does 
seem  like  hedging." 

"They  ain't  anybody  for  it  to  seem  to,"  Mis' 
Winslow  contended  reasonably,  "but  us.  And 
we  understand." 

"We  was  going  to  do  entirely  without  a 
Christmas  this  year.  Entirely  without,"  Mis' 
Bates  rehearsed. 

"Was  we  going  to  do  entirely  without  every 
day,  week-day,  year-in-and-year-out  milk  of 
human  kindness?"  Mis'  Winslow  demanded. 
"Well,  then,  let's  us  use  a  little  of  it,  same  as 
we  would  on  a  Monday  wash  day." 


CHRISTMAS  173 

No  voice  was  raised  in  real  protest.  None 
who  had  signed  the  paper  and  none  who  had 
not  done  so  could  take  exception  to  this  simple 
way  of  hospitality  to  the  little  stranger  with  a 
tag  on.  And  it  was  the  glory  of  the  little  town 
being  a  little  town  that  they  somehow  let  it  be 
known  that  every  one  was  expected  to  look  in 
at  Mary's  that  night.  No  one  was  uninvited. 
And  this  was  like  a  part  of  the  midwinter 
mystery  expressing  itself  unbidden. 

Mary  alone  was  not  told.  She  had  con 
sistently  objected  to  the  Christmas  observances 
for  so  long  that  they  feared  the  tyranny 
of  her  custom.  "She  might  not  let  us  do 
it,"  they  said,  "but  if  we  all  get  there,  she 
can't  help  liking  it.  She  would  on  any  other 
day  .  .  ." 

...  So  she  alone  in  Old  Trail  Town  woke 
that  morning  before  Christmas  with  no  knowl 
edge  of  this  that  was  afoot.  And  yet  the  day 


174  CHRISTMAS 

was  not  like  any  other  day,  because  she  lay 
there  dreading  it  more. 

She  had  cleared  out  her  little  sleeping  room, 
as  she  had  cleared  the  lower  floor.  The  cham 
ber,  with  its  white-plastered  walls,  and  boards 
nearly  bare,  and  narrow  white  bed,  had  the 
look  of  a  cell,  in  the  first  light  struggling  through 
the  single  snow-framed  window.  Here,  since 
her  childhood  she  had  lain  nightly;  here  she 
had  brought  her  thought  of  Adam  Blood,  and 
had  seen  the  thought  die  and  had  watched  with 
it;  here  she  had  lain  on  the  nights  after  her 
parents  had  died;  here  she  had  rested,  body- 
sick  with  fatigue,  in  the  years  that  she  had 
toiled  to  keep  her  home.  In  all  that  time 
there  had  gone  on  within  her  many  kinds  of 
death.  She  had  arrived  somehow  at  a  dumb 
feeling  that  these  dyings  were  gradually  un 
covering  her  self  from  somewhere  within ; 
rather,  uncovering  some  self  whose  existence 


CHRISTMAS  175 

she  only  dimly  guessed.  "They's  two  of  me/' 
she  had  thought  more  often  of  late  "and  we 
don't  meet  —  we  don't  meet."  She  lived 
among  her  neighbors  without  hate,  without 
malice;  for  years  she  had  "meant  nothing  but 
love"  —  and  this  not  negatively.  The  rebellion 
against  Christmas  was  against  only  the  falsity 
of  its  meaningless  observance.  The  rebellion 
against  taking  the  child,  though  somewhat 
grounded  in  her  distrust  of  her  own  fitness,  was 
really  the  last  vestige  of  a  self  that  had  clung 
to  her,  in  bitterness  not  toward  Adam,  but 
toward  Lily.  Ever  since  she  had  known  that  the 
child  was  coming  she  had  felt  a  kind  of  spiritual 
exhaustion,  sharpened  by  the  strange  sense  of 
oppression  that  hung  upon  her  like  an  illness. 

"I  feel  as  if  something  was  going  to  happen," 
she  kept  saying. 

In  a  little  while  she  leaned  toward  the  win 
dow  at  her  bed's  head,  and  looked  down  the 


176  CHRISTMAS 

hill  toward  Jenny's.  Her  heart  throbbed  when 
she  saw  a  light  there.  Of  late,  when  she  had 
waked  in  t  the  night,  she  had  always  looked,  but 
always  until  now  the  little  house  had  been 
wrapped. in  the  darkness.  Because  of  that  light, 
she  could  not  sleep  again,  and  so  presently 
she  rose,  and  in  the  sharp  chill  of  the  room, 
bathed  and  dressed,  though  what  had  once 
been  her  savage  satisfaction  in  braving  the  cold 
had  long  since  become  mere  undramatic  ability 
to  endure  it  without  thinking.  With  Mary, 
life  and  all  its  constructive  rites  had  won  what 
the  sacrificial  has  never  been  able  to  achieve  — 
the  soul  of  the  casual,  of,  so  to  say,  second 
nature,  which  is  last  nature,  and  nature  trium 
phant. 

While  she  was  at  breakfast  Mis'  Abby 
Winslow  came  in. 

"Mercy,'7  Mis'  Winslow  said,  "is  it  breakfast- 
early  ?  I've  been  up  hours,  frosting  the  cakes." 


CHRISTMAS  177 

"What  cakes?"  Mary  asked  idly. 

Mis'  Winslow  flushed  dully.  "I  ain't  baked 
anything  much  in  weeks  before,"  she  answered 
ambiguously,  and  hurried  from  the  subject. 

"The  little  fellow's  coming  in  on  the  Local, 
is  he?"  she  said.  "You  ain't  heard  anything 
different?" 

"Nothing  different,"  Mary  replied.  "Yes,  of 
course  he's  coming.  They  left  there  Saturday, 
or  I'd  have  heard.  The  man  he's  with  is  going 
to  get  home  to-night  for  Christmas  with  his 
folks  in  the  City." 

"Going  down  to  meet  him  of  course,  ain't 
you,"  Mis'  Winslow  pursued  easily. 

"Why,  yes,"  said  Mary. 

"Well,"  Mis'  Winslow  mounted  her  prep 
aration,  "I  was  thinking  it  would  be  kind  of 
dark  for  you  to  bring  him  in  here  all  alone. 
Don't  you  want  I  should  come  over  and  keep 
up  the  lights  and  be  here  when  you  get  here?" 


178  CHRISTMAS 

She  watched  Mary  in  open  anxiety.  If  she 
were  to  refuse,  it  would  go  rather  awkwardly. 
To  her  delight  Mary  welcomed  with  real  relief 
the  suggestion. 

"I'd  be  ever  so  much  obliged,"  she  said; 
"I  thought  of  asking  somebody.  I'll  have  a 
little  supper  set  out  for  him  before  I  leave." 

"Yes,  of  course,"  Mis'  Winslow  said,  eyes 
down.  "I'll  be  over  about  seven,"  she  added. 
"If  the  train's  on  time,  you'll  be  back  here 
around  half  past.  The  children  want  to  go 
down  with  you  —  they  can  be  at  Mis'  Moran's 
when  you  go  by.  You'll  walk  up  from  the 
depot,  won't  you?  You  do,"  she  said  per 
suasively;  "the  little  fellow'll  be  glad  to 
stretch  his  legs.  And  it'll  give  the  children 
a  chance  to  get  acquainted." 

"I  might  as  well,"  Mary  assented  listlessly. 
"  There's  no  need  to  hurry  home,  as  I  know  of, 
except  keeping  you  waiting." 


CHRISTMAS  179 

"Oh,  I  don't  mind/'  Mis'  Winslow  told  her. 
" Better  come  around  through  town,  too.  It's 
some  farther,  but  he'll  like  the  lights.  What's 
the  little  chap's  name?"  she  asked;  "I  donno's 
I've  heard  you  say." 

Mary  flushed  faintly.  "Do  you  know," 
she  said,  "I  don't  know  his  name.  I  can't 
remember  that  Lily  ever  told  me.  They 
always  called  him  just  YeSj  because  he  learned 
to  say  that  first." 

"'Yes'!"  repeated  Mis'  Winslow,  blankly. 
"Why,  it  don't  sound  to  me  real  human." 

Later  in  the  day,  Mis'  Mortimer  Bates  and 
Mis'  Moran  came  in  to  see  Mary.  Both  were 
hurried  and  tired,  and  occasionally  one  of  them 
lapsed  into  some  mental  calculation.  "We 
must  remember  something  for  the  middle  of 
the  table,"  Mis'  Bates  observed  to  Mis' 
Moran,  under  cover  of  Mary's  putting  wood 
in  the  stove.  And  when  Mary  related  the 


i8o  CHRISTMAS 

breaking  of  the  bracket  lamp,  the  two  other 
women  telegraphed  to  each  other  a  glance 
of  memorandum. 

"  Don't  it  seem  funny  to  you  to  have  Christ 
mas  coming  on  to-morrow  and  no  flurry  about 
it?"  Mary  asked. 

"  No  flurry ! "  Mis'  Bates  burst  out.  "  Oh, 
well,"  she  amended,  "  of  course  this  Christmas 
does  feel  a  little  funny  to  all  of  us.  Don't 
you  think  so,  Mis'  Moran?  " 

"I  donno,"  said  Mary,  thoughtfully,  "but 
what,  when  folks  stop  chasing  after  Christmas 
and  driving  it  before  them,  Christmas  may 
turn  around  and  come  to  find  them." 

"  Mebbe  so, "  Mis'  Moran  said  with  bright 
eyes,  "mebbe  so.  Oh,  Mary,"  she  added, 
"  ain't  it  nice  he's  coming?  " 

Mary  looked  at  them,  frowning  a  little. 
"It  seemed  like  the  thing  had  to  happen," 
she  said ;  "  it'll  fit  itself  in." 


CHRISTMAS  181 

Before  dark  she  took  a  last  look  about  the 
child's  room.  The  owl  paper,  the  puppy  wash 
basin,  the  huge  calendar  with  its  picture  of 
a  stag,  the  shelves  for  whatever  things  of  his 
own  he  had,  all  pleased  her  newly.  She  had 
laid  on  his  table  her  grandfather's  Bible  with 
pictures  of  Asiatic  places.  Below  his  mirror 
hung  his  father's  photograph,  that  young  face, 
with  the  unspeakable  wistfulness  of  youth,  look 
ing  somewhere  outside  the  picture.  It  made 
her  think  of  the  passionate  expectation  in  the 
face  of  the  picture  that  Jenny  had  brought. 

"Young  folks  in  pictures  always  look  like 
they  was  setting  store  by  something  that  ain't 
true  yet, "  Mary  thought.  "  It  makes  you  kind 
of  feel  you  have  to  pitch  in  and  make  whatever 
it  is  come  true,  a  little.  .  .  ." 

It  was  when  Mis'  Winslow  came  back  to 
ward  seven  o'clock  that  there  was  news  of 
Jenny.  Mary  had  been  twice  to  her  door  in  the 


i8o  CHRISTMAS 

breaking  of  the  bracket  lamp,  the  two  other 
women  telegraphed  to  each  other  a  glance 
of  memorandum. 

"  Don't  it  seem  funny  to  you  to  have  Christ 
mas  coming  on  to-morrow  and  no  flurry  about 
it?"  Mary  asked. 

"  No  flurry ! "  Mis'  Bates  burst  out.  "  Oh, 
well,"  she  amended,  "  of  course  this  Christmas 
does  feel  a  little  funny  to  all  of  us.  Don't 
you  think  so,  Mis'  Moran?  " 

"I  donno,"  said  Mary,  thoughtfully,  "but 
what,  when  folks  stop  chasing  after  Christmas 
and  driving  it  before  them,  Christmas  may 
turn  around  and  come  to  find  them. " 

"Mebbe  so,"  Mis'  Moran  said  with  bright 
eyes,  "mebbe  so.  Oh,  Mary,"  she  added, 
"  ain't  it  nice  he's  coming?  " 

Mary  looked  at  them,  frowning  a  little. 
"It  seemed  like  the  thing  had  to  happen," 
she  said ;  "  it'll  fit  itself  in." 


CHRISTMAS  181 

Before  dark  she  took  a  last  look  about  the 
child's  room.  The  owl  paper,  the  puppy  wash 
basin,  the  huge  calendar  with  its  picture  of 
a  stag,  the  shelves  for  whatever  things  of  his 
own  he  had,  all  pleased  her  newly.  She  had 
laid  on  his  table  her  grandfather's  Bible  with 
pictures  of  Asiatic  places.  Below  his  mirror 
hung  his  father's  photograph,  that  young  face, 
with  the  unspeakable  wistfulness  of  youth,  look 
ing  somewhere  outside  the  picture.  It  made 
her  think  of  the  passionate  expectation  in  the 
face  of  the  picture  that  Jenny  had  brought. 

"Young  folks  in  pictures  always  look  like 
they  was  setting  store  by  something  that  ain't 
true  yet, "  Mary  thought.  "  It  makes  you  kind 
of  feel  you  have  to  pitch  in  and  make  whatever 
it  is  come  true,  a  little.  .  .  ." 

It  was  when  Mis'  Winslow  came  back  to 
ward  seven  o'clock  that  there  was  news  of 
Jenny.  Mary  had  been  twice  to  her  door  in  the 


1 84  CHRISTMAS 

sparkle,  and  Mary's  step  and  breath  seemed 
living  things  —  but  from  the  rows  of  chimneys 
up  and  down  the  Old  Trail  Road,  faint  smoke 
went  up,  a  plume,  a  wreath,  a  veil,  where  the 
village  folk,  invisible  within  quiet  roof  and 
wall,  lifted  common  signals;  and  from  here 
a  window  and  there  a  window,  a  light  shone 
out,  a  point,  a  ray,  a  glow,  so  that  one  without 
would  almost  say,  "There's  home." 

The  night  before  Christmas;  and  in  not 
one  home  was  there  any  preparation  for  to 
morrow,  Mary  thought,  unless  one  or  two  law 
less  ones  had  broken  bounds  and  contrived  some 
thing,  from  a  little  remembrance  for  somebody 
to  a  suet  pudding.  It  was  strange,  she  owned  : 
no  trees  being  trimmed,  no  churches  lighted  for 
practice,  and  the  shops  closed  as  on  any  other 
night.  Only  the  post  office  had  light  —  she 
went  in  to  look  in  her  box.  Afler  was  there 
at  the  telegraph  window,  and  he  accosted  her. 


CHRISTMAS  185 

"Little  boy's  comin'  to-night,  is  he?"  he 
said,  as  one  of  the  sponsors  for  that  arrival. 

"I'm  on  my  way  to  the  train  now,"  Mary 
answered,  and  noted  the  Christmas  notice 
with  its  soiled  and  dog-eared  list  still  hanging 
on  the  wall.  "It  was  a  good  move/7  she 
insisted  to  herself,  as  she  went  out  into  the 
empty  street  again. 

"You  got  a  merry  Christmas  without  no 
odds  of  the  paper  or  me  either,"  After  called 
after  her;  but  she  did  not  answer  save  with 
her  "Thank  you,  Mr.  After." 

"Why  do  they  all  pretend  to  think  it's  so 
fine  for  me?"  she  wondered.  "To  cheer  me 
up,  I  guess,"  she  thought  grimly. 

To-night  they  were  all  sharing  the  aloofness 
from  the  time,  an  aloofness  which  she  herself 
had  known  for  years.  All  save  Jenny.  To 
Jenny's  house,  in  defiance  of  that  dog-eared 
paper  in  the  post  office,  Christmas  had  come. 


l86  CHRISTMAS 

Not  a  Christmas  of  "present  trading/'  not  a 
Christmas  of  things  at  all;  but  Christmas. 
Unto  them  a  child  was  born. 

"Jenny's  the  only  one  in  this  town  that's 
got  a  real  Christmas/'  thought  Mary,  on  her 
way  to  meet  her  own  little  guest. 

The  Simeon  Buck  North  American  Dry 
Goods  Exchange  was  dark,  too,  and  from  its 
cave  of  window  the  gray  Saint  Nicholas  looked 
out,  bearing  his  flag  —  and  he  to-night  an  idle, 
mummy  thing  of  no  significance.  The  Abel 
Ames  General  Merchandise  Emporium  was 
closed,  but  involuntarily  Mary  stopped  before 
it.  In  its  great  plate-glass  window  a  single 
candle  burned.  She  stood  for  a  moment 
looking. 

"Why,  that's  what  they  do,  some  places,  to 
let  the  Christ-child  in,"  Mary  thought.  "I 
wonder  if  Abel  knows.  How  funny  —  for  a 
store!" 


CHRISTMAS  187 

Some  one  whom  she  did  not  know  passed  her 
and  looked  too. 

"Kind  o'  nice,"  said  the  other. 

"Real  nice/7  Mary  returned,  and  went  on 
with  a  little  glow. 

Abel's  candle,  and  the  arc  light  shining  like 
cold  blue  crystal  before  the  dark  Town  Hall, 
and  the  post-office  light  where  the  dog-eared 
list  hung  and  the  telegraph  key  clicked  out  its 
pretence  at  hand  touching  with  all  the  world, 
these  were  the  only  lights  the  street  showed  — 
save  Capella,  that  went  beside  her  and,  as  she 
looked,  seemed  almost  to  stand  above  the 
town. 

At  Mis'  Moran's  house  on  the  other  side  of 
the  square,  the  children  were  waiting  for  her  — 
Bennet  and  Gussie  and  Tab  and  Pep  and  little 
Emily.  They  ran  before  Mary  in  the  road,  all 
save  little  Emily,  who  walked  clasping  Mary's 
hand. 


i88  CHRISTMAS 

"Aren't  you  staying  up  late,  Emily?"  Mary 
asked  her. 

"Yes,"  assented  the  child,  contentedly. 

"Won't  you  be  sleepy?"  Mary  pursued. 

"I  was  going  to  stay  awake  anyhow,"  she 
said;  "I  ain't  goin'  sleep  all  night.  We  said 
so.  We're  goin'  stay  'wake  and  see  Santa 
Claus  go  by." 

"Go  by?"  Mary  repeated. 

"Yes,"  the  child  explained;  "you  don't 
think  that'll  hurt,  do  you?"  she  asked 
anxiously.  "And  then,"  she  pursued,  "if  we 
don't  see  him,  we'll  know  he's  dead  every- 
wheres  else,  too.  An'  then  we're  goin'  bury 
him  to-morrow  morning,  up  to  Gussie's  house." 

At  the  station,  no  one  was  yet  about.  The 
telegraph  instrument  was  clicking  there,  too, 
signaling  the  world;  a  light  showed  in  the  office 
behind  a  row  of  sickly  geraniums;  the  wind 
came  down  through  the  cut  and  across  the 


CHRISTMAS  189 

tracks  and  swept  the  little  platform.  But 
the  children  begging  to  stay  outside,  Mary 
stood  in  a  corner  by  the  telegraph  operator's 
bay  window  and  looked  across  to  the  open 
meadows  beyond  the  tracks  and  up  at  the  great 
star.  The  meadows,  sloping  to  an  horizon 
hill,  were  even  and  white,  as  if  an  end  of  sky 
had  been  pulled  down  and  spread  upon  them. 
Utter  peace  was  there,  not  the  primeval  peace 
that  is  negation,  but  a  silence  that  listened. 

"'While  shepherds  watched  their  flocks  by 
night,  all  seated  on  the  ground, . . .' "  Mary  thought 
and  looked  along  the  horizon  hill.  The  time 
needed  an  invocation  from  some  one  who 
watched,  as  many  voices,  through  many  cen 
turies,  had  made  invocation  on  Christmas  Eve. 
For  a  moment,  looking  over  the  lonely  white 
places  where  no  one  watched,  as  no  one  — 
save  only  Jenny  —  watched  in  the  town,  Mary 
forgot  the  children,  ,  ,  , 


1 90  CHRISTMAS 

The  shoving  and  grating  of  baggage  truck 
wheels  recalled  her.  Just  beyond  the  bay 
window  she  saw  little  Emily  lifted  to  the  truck 
and  the  four  others  follow,  and  the  ten  heels 
dangle  in  air. 

"Now!"  said  Pep.    And  a  chant  arose: 

"'Twas    the   night   before   Christmas  when   all 

through  the  house 

Not  a  creature  was  stirring,  not  even  a  mouse. 
The  stockings  were  hung  by  the  chimney  with 

care 
In  the  hope  that  Saint  Nicholas  soon  would 

be  there.  .  .  ." 

Upborne  by  one,  now  by  another,  now  by  all 
three  voices,  the  verses  went  on  unto  the  end. 
And  it  was  as  if  not  only  Tab  and  Pep  and  Ben- 
net  and  Gussie  and  little  Emily  were  chanting, 
but  all  children  who  had  ever  counted  the  days 
to  Christmas  and  had  found  Christmas  the  one 


CHRISTMAS  191 

piece  of  magic  that  is  looked  on  with  kindness 
by  a  grown-up  world.  The  magic  of  swimming 
holes,  for  example,  is  largely  a  forbidden  magic; 
the  magic  of  loud  noises,  of  fast  motion,  of 
living  things  in  pockets,  of  far  journeys,  of 
going  off  alone,  of  digging  caves,  of  building 
fires,  of  high  places,  of  many  closed  doors, 
words,  mechanisms,  foods,  ownerships,  manners, 
costumes,  companions,  and  holidays  are  denied 
them.  But  in  Christmas  their  affinity  for 
mystery  is  recognized,  encouraged,  gratified, 
annually  provided  for.  The  little  group  on 
the  baggage  truck  chanted  their  watch  over 
a  dead  body  of  Christmas,  but  its  magic  was 
there,  inviolate.  The  singsong  verses  had 
almost  the  dignity  of  lyric  expression,  of  the 
essence  of  familiarity  with  that  which  is  un 
known.  As  if,  because  humanity  had  always 
recognized  that  the  will  to  Christmas  was 
greater  than  it  knew,  these  words  had  somehow 


IQ2  CHRISTMAS 

been  made  to  catch  and  reproduce,  for  genera 
tions,  some  faint  spirit  of  the  midwinter 
mystery. 

The   'bus  rattled  up   to  the  platform  and 
Buff  Miles  leaped  down   and   blanketed    his 
horses,  talking  to  them  as  was  his  wont. 
"So,  holly  and  mistletoe, 
So,  holly  and  mistletoe, 
So,  holly,  and  mistletoe, 
Over  and  over  and  over,  oh  .  .  ." 

he  was  singing  as  he  came  round  the  corner  of 
the  station. 

"It  ain't  Christmas  yet,"  he  observed  de 
fensively  to  Mary.  "It  ain't  forbid  except  for 
Christmas  Day,  is  it?" 

He  went  and  bent  over  the  children  on  the 
truck. 

"Look  alive  as  soon  as  you  can  do  it,"  Mary 
heard  him  say  to  them,  and  wondered. 

She  stood  looking  up  the  track.    Across  the 


CHRISTMAS  193 

still  fields,  lying  empty  and  ready  for  some 
presence,  came  flashing  the  point  of  flame 
that  streamed  from  the  headlight  of  the  train. 
The  light  shone  out  like  a  signal  flashed  back 
to  the  star  standing  above  the  town. 


XII 

TEN  minutes  after  Mary  Chavah  had  left 
her  house,  every  window  was  lighted,  a  fire 
was  kindled  in  the  parlour,  and  neighbours 
came  from  the  dark  and  fell  to  work  at  the 
baskets  they  had  brought. 

It  was  marvelous  what  homely  cheer  arose. 
The  dining-room  table,  stretched  at  its  fullest 
length  and  white-covered,  was  various  with 
the  yellow  and  red  of  fruit  and  salads,  the 
golden  brown  of  cake  and  rolls,  and  the  mosaic 
of  dishes.  The  fire  roared  in  the  flat-topped 
stove  on  whose  " wings''  covered  pans  waited, 
and  everywhere  was  that  happy  stir  and  touch 
and  lift,  that  note  of  preparation  which  in 
forms  a  time  as  sunshine  or  music  will  strike 
its  key. 

"My  land,  the  oven  —  the  warming  oven. 
194 


CHRISTMAS  195 

Mary  ain't  got  one.  However  will  we  keep 
the  stuff  hot?"  Mis'  Winslow  demanded. 
"What  time  is  it?" 

"We'd  ought  to  had  my  big  coffee-pot. 
We'd  ought  to  set  two  going.  I  donno  why 
I  didn't  think  of  it,"  Mis'  Moran  grieved. 

"Well,"  said  Mis'  Mortimer  Bates,  "when 
the  men  get  here  —  if  they  ever  do  get  here  — 
we'll  send  one  of  'em  off  somewheres  for  the 
truck  we  forgot.  What  time  is  it?" 

"Here  comes  a  whole  cartload  of  folks," 
Mis'  Moran  announced.  "I  hope  and  pray 
they've  got  the  oysters  —  they'd  ought  to  be 
popped  in  the  baking  oven  a  minute.  What 
time  did  you  say  it  is?" 

"It's  twenty  minutes  past  seven,"  Mis' 
Winslow  said,  pushing  her  hair  straight  back, 
regardless  of  its  part,  "  and  we  ain't  ready 
within  'leven  hundred  miles." 

"Well,  if  they  only  all  get  here,"  Mis'  Bates 


196  CHRISTMAS 

said,  ringing  golden  and  white  stuffed  eggs  on 
Mary's  blue  platter;  "it's  their  all  being  here 
when  she  gets  here  that  I  want.  I  ain't 
worried  about  the  supper  —  much." 

"The  road's  black  with  folks,"  Mis'  Moran 
went  on.  "I'm  so  deadly  afraid  I  didn't  make 
enough  sandwiches.  Oh,  I  donno  why  it 
wasn't  given  me  to  make  more,  I'm  sure." 

"Who's  seeing  to  them  in  the  parlour? 
Who's  getting  their  baskets  out  here  ?  Where 
they  finding  a  place  for  their  wraps?  Who's 
lighting  the  rest  of  the  lamps?  What  time  is 
it  ?"  demanded  Mis'  Winslow,  cutting  her  cakes. 

"Oh,"  said  Mis'  Bates  from  a  cloud  of  brown 
butter  about  the  cooking  stove,  "I  donno 
whether  we've  done  right.  I  donno  but  we've 
broke  our  word  to  the  Christmas  paper.  I 
donno  whether  we  ain't  going  to  get  ourselves 
criticized  for  this  as  never  folks  was  criti 
cized  before." 


CHRISTMAS  197 

Mis'  Moran  changed  her  chair  to  the  draught- 
less  corner  back  of  the  cooking  stove  and  offered 
to  stir  the  savoury  saucepan. 

"I  know  it,"  she  said,  "I  know  it.  We  never 
planned  much  in  the  first  start.  It  grew  and  it 
grew  like  it  grew  with  its  own  bones.  But 
mebbe  there's  some  won't  believe  that,  one 
secunt." 

Mis'  Winslow  straightened  up  from  the 
table  and  held  out  a  hand  with  fingers 
frosting- tipped. 

"Well,"  she  said,  with  a  great  period,  "if 
we  have  broke  our  word  to  the  Christmas  paper, 
I'd  rather  stand  up  here  with  my  word  broke 
this  way  than  with  it  kept  so  good  it  hurt  me. 
Is  it  half -past  seven  yet  ?" 

"I  wish  Ellen  Bourne  was  here,"  Mis'  Bates 
observed.  "  She  sent  her  salad  dressing  over 
and  lent  her  silver  and  her  Christmas  rose  for 
the  table  —  but  come  she  would  not.  I  wonder 


198  CHRISTMAS 

if  she  couldn't  come  over  now  if  we  sent  after 
her,  last  minute?" 

Simeon  Buck,  appearing  a  few  minutes  later 
at  the  kitchen  door  to  set  a  basket  inside,  was 
dispatched  for  Ellen  Bourne,  the  warming  oven, 
and  the  coffee-pot,  collectively.  He  took  with 
him  Abel  Ames,  who  was  waiting  for  him  with 
out.  And  it  chanced  that  they  knocked  at  the 
Bournes'  door  just  after  Ben  Helders  had 
driven  away  with  the  little  boy,  so  that 
the  men  found  the  family  still  in  the  presence 
of  the  little  tree. 

"Hello,"  said  Simeon, aghast,  " Christmassing 
away  all  by  yourselves,  I'll  be  bound,  like  so 
many  thieves.  I  rec'lect  not  seeing  your  names 
on  the  paper." 

"No,  I  didn'jt  sign,"  Ellen  said.  "I  voted 
against  it  that  night  at  the  town  meeting,  but  I 
guess  nobody  heard  me." 

"Well,"  said  Simeon,  "and  so  here  you've 


CHRISTMAS  199 

got  a  Christmas  of  your  own  going  forward, 
neat  as  a  kitten's  foot  — " 

"Ain't  you  coming  over  to  Mary  Cha van's  ?" 
Abel  broke  in  with  a  kind  of  gentleness.  "All 
of  you?" 

Ellen  smote  her  hands  together. 

"I  meant  to  go  over  later,"  she  said,  "and 
take—"  She  paused.  "I  thought  we'd  all 
go  over  later,"  she  said.  "I  forgot  about  it. 
Why,  yes,  I  guess  we  can  go  now,  can't  we? 
All  three  of  us  ?  " 

Abel  Ames  stood  looking  at  the  tree.  He  half 
guessed  that  she  might  have  dressed  it  for  no 
one  who  would  see  it.  He  looked  at  Ellen  and 
ventured  what  he  thought. 

"Ellen,"  he  said,  "if  you  ain't  going  to  do 
anything  more  with  that  tree  to-night,  why  not 
take  some  of  the  things  off,  and  have  Matthew 
set  it  on  his  shoulder,  and  bring  it  over  to 
Maiy's  for  the  boy  that's  corning?" 


200  CHRISTMAS 

Ellen  hesitated.  "  Would  they  like  it  ?  "  she 
asked.  "Would  folks?" 

Abel  smiled.  "  I'll  take  the  blame,"  he  said, 
"and  you  take  the  tree."  And  seeing  Simeon 
hesitate,  "Now  let's  stop  by  for  Mis'  Moran's 
coffee-pot,"  he  added.  "Hustle  up.  The  Lo 
cal  must  be  in." 

So  presently  the  tree,  partly  divested  of  its 
brightness,  was  carried  through  the  streets  to 
the  other  house — in  more  than  the  magic  which 
attends  the  carrying  in  the  open  road  of  a  tree, 
a  statue,  a  cart  filled  with  flowers,  —  for  the 
tree  was  like  some  forbidden  thing  that  still 
would  be  expressed. 

"He  might  not  come  till  Christmas  is  'way 
past,"  Ellen  thought,  foUowing.  "She'll  leave 
it  standing  a  few  days.  We  can  go  down  there 
and  look  at  it  —  if  he  comes." 

A  little  way  behind  them,  Simeon  and  Abel, 
with  the  coffee-pot  and  the  warming  oven,  were 


THEIR  WAY  LED  EAST  BETWEEN  HIGH  BANKS 
OF  SNOW" 


CHRISTMAS  201 

hurrying  back  to  Mary's.  They  went  down  the 
deserted  street  where  AbePs  candle  burned  and 
Simeon's  saint  stood  mute. 

"When  I  was  a  little  shaver,"  Abel  said, 
"they  used  to  have  me  stand  in  the  open  door 
way  Christmas  Eve,  and  hold  a  candle  and  say 
a  verse.  I  forget  the  verse.  But  I've  always 
liked  the  candle  in  doors  or  windows,  like  to 
night.  Look  at  mine  over  there  now  —  ain't  it 
like  somebody  saying  something?" 

"Well,"  said  Simeon,  not  to  be  outdone, 
"when  we  come  by  my  window  just  now,  the 
light  hit  down  on  it  and  I  could  of  swore  I  see 
the  saint  smile." 

"Like  enough,"  said  Abel,  placidly,  "like 
enough.  You  can't  put  Christmas  out.  I  see 
that  two  weeks  ago."  He  looked  back  at  his 
own  window.  "  If  the  little  kid  that  come  in  the 
store  last  Christmas  Eve  tries  to  come  in  again 
to-night,"  he  said,  "he  won't  find  it  all  pitch 


202  CHRISTMAS 

dark,    anyway.      I'd    like    to   know    who   he 


was. 


Near  the  corner  that  turned  down  to  the 
Rule  Factory,  they  saw  Ebenezer  Rule  coming 
toward  them  on  the  Old  Trail  Road.  They 
called  to  him. 

"Hello,  Ebenezer/'  said  Abel,  " ain't  you 
coming  in  to  Mary  Chavah's  to-night  ?" 

"I  think  not,"  Ebenezer  answered. 

"Come  ahead,"  encouraged  Simeon. 

As  they  met,  Abel  spoke  hesitatingly. 

"Ebenezer,"  he  said,  "I  was  just  figuring  on 
proposing  to  Simeon  here,  that  we  stop  in  to 
your  house  —  I  was  thinking,"  he  broke  off, 
"how  would  it  be  for  you  and  him  and  me,  that 
sort  of  stand  for  the  merchandise  end  of  this 
town,  to  show-up  at  Mary's  house  to-night  - 
well,  it's  the  women  have  done  all  the  work  so 
far  —  and  I  was  wondering  how  it  would  be 
for  us  three  to  get  there  with  some  little  thing 


CHRISTMAS  203 

for  that  little  kid  that's  coming  to  her  —  we 
could  find  something  that  wouldn't  cost  much  — 
it  hadn't  ought  to  cost  much,  'count  of  our  set 
principles.  And  take  it  to  him.  .  .  ."  Abel 
ended  doubtfully. 

Ebenezer  simply  laughed  his  curious  succes 
sion  of  gutturals. 

"Crazy  to  Christmas  after  all,  ain't  you?" 
he  said. 

But  Simeon  wheeled  and  stared  at  Abel. 
For  defection  in  their  own  camp  he  had  never 
looked. 

"I  knew  you'd  miss  it  —  I  knew  you'd  miss 
it!"  Simeon  said  excitedly,  "cut  paper  and 
fancy  tassels  and  — " 

"No  such  thing,"  said  Abel,  shortly.  "I  was 
thinking  of  that  boy  getting  here,  that's  all. 
And  I  couldn't  see  why  we  shouldn't  do  our 
share  —  which  totin'  coffee-pots  and  warming 
ovens  ain't,  as  I  see  it." 


204  CHRISTMAS 

"Well,  but  my  heavens,  man  !"  said  Simeon, 
"it's  Christmas  !  You  can't  go  giving  anybody 
anything,  can  you  ?" 

"I  don't  mean  give  it  to  him  for  Christmas 
at  all,"  protested  Abel.  "I  mean  give  it  to 
him  just  like  you  would  any  other  day.  We'd 
likely  take  him  something  if  it  wasn't  Christ 
mas  ?  Sort  of  to  show  our  good  will,  like  the 
women  with  the  supper  ?  Well,  why  not  take 
him  some  little  thing  even  if  it  is  Christmas  ?" 

"Oh,  well,"  said  Simeon,  "that  way.  If  you 
make  it  plain  it  ain't  for  Christmas  —  Of 
course,  we  ain't  to  blame  for  what  day  his  train 
got  in  on." 

"Sure  we  ain't,"  said  Abel,  confidently. 

Ebenezer  was  moving  away. 

"We'll  call  in  for  you  in  half  an  hour  or  so," 
Abel's  voice  followed  him.  "We'll  slip  out 
after  the  boy  gets  there.  There  won't  be  time 
before  .  .  .  what  say,  Ebenezer  ?" 


CHRISTMAS  205 

"I  think  not,"  said  Ebenezer;  "you  don't 
need  me." 

"  Well  —  congratulations  anyhow  ! "  Abel 
called. 

Ebenezer  stopped  on  the  crossing. 

"What  for?  "he  asked. 

"Man  alive,"  said  Abel,  "don't  you  know 
Bruce  has  got  a  little  girl  ?" 

"No,"  said  Ebenezer,  "I  — didn't  know. 
I'm  obliged  to  you." 

He  turned  from  them,  but  instead  of  crossing 
the  street  to  go  to  his  house,  he  faced  down  the 
little  dark  street  to  the  factory.  He  had 
walked  past  Jenny's  once  that  evening,  but 
without  being  able  to  force  himself  to  inquire. 
He  knew  that  Bruce  had  come  a  day  or  two 
before,  but  Bruce  had  sent  him  no  word. 
Bruce  had  never  sent  any  word  since  the 
conditions  of  the  failure  had  been  made  plain 
to  him,  when  he  had  resigned  his  position,  refused 


206  CHRISTMAS 

the  salary  due  him,  and  left  Old  Trail  Town. 
Clearly,  Ebenezer  could  make  no  inquiry  under 
those  circumstances,  he  told  himself.  They  had 
cut  themselves  off  from  him,  definitely. 

How  definitely  he  was  cut  off  from  them  was 
evident  as  he  went  down  the  dark  street  to  the 
factory.  He  was  strangely  quickened,  from 
head  to  foot,  with  the  news  of  the  birth  of 
Bruce's  child.  He  went  down  toward  the  fac 
tory  simply  because  that  was  the  place  that  he 
knew  best,  and  he  wanted  to  be  near  it.  He 
walked  in  the  snow  of  the  mid-road,  facing 
the  wind,  steeped  in  that  sense  of  keener  being 
which  a  word  may  pour  in  the  veins  until  the 
body  flows  with  it.  The  third  generation; 
the  next  of  kin,  —  that  which  stirred  in  him 
was  a  satisfaction  almost  physical  that  his  fam 
ily  was  promised  its  future. 

As  he  went  he  was  unconscious,  as  he  was 
always  unconscious,  of  the  little  street.  But, 


CHRISTMAS  207 

perhaps  because  Abel  had  mentioned  Mary's 
house,  he  noted  the  folk,  bound  thither,  whom 
he  was  meeting:  Ben  Torry,  with  a  basket, 
and  his  two  boys  beside  him;  August  Muir, 
carrying  his  little  girl  and  a  basket,  and  his 
wife  following  with  a  basket.  Ebenezer  spoke 
to  them,  and  after  he  had  passed  them  he 
thought  about  them  for  a  minute. 

"Quite  little  families,"  he  thought.  "I 
s'pose  they  get  along.  ...  I  wonder  how 
much  Bruce  is  making  a  week  ?" 

Nellie  Hatch  and  her  lame  sister  were  watch 
ing  at  the  lighted  window,  as  if  there  were 
something  to  see. 

"Must  be  kind  of  dreary  work  for  them  — 
living,"  he  thought,  "  .  .  .  I  s'pose  Bruce  is 
pretty  pleased  .  .  .  pretty  pleased." 

At  the  corner,  some  one  spoke  to  him  with  a 
note  of  pleasure  in  his  voice.  It  was  his 
bookkeeper,  with  his  wife  and  two  partly  grown 


208  CHRISTMAS 

daughters.  Ebenezer  thought  of  his  last  meet 
ing  with  his  bookkeeper,  and  remembered  the 
man's  smile  of  perfect  comprehension  and  sym 
pathy,  as  if  they  two  had  something  in  common. 

"Family  life  does  cling  to  a  man,"  he  had 
said. 

That  was  his  wife  on  his  arm,  and  their  two 
daughters.  On  that  salary  of  his.  .  .  .  Was 
it  possible,  it  occurred  to  Ebenezer,  that  she 
was  saving  egg  money,  earning  sewing  money, 
winning  prizes  for  puzzles  —  as  Letty  had  done  ? 

Outside  the  factory,  the  blue  arc  light  threw  a 
thousand  shadows  on  the  great  bulk  of  the  build 
ing,  but  left  naked  in  light  the  little  office.  He 
stood  looking  at  it,  as  he  so  rarely  saw  it,  from 
part  way  across  the  road.  Seen  so,  it  took  on 
another  aspect,  as  if  it  had  emerged  from  some 
costuming  given  it  by  the  years.  The  office 
was  painted  brown,  and  discoloured.  He  saw 
it  white,  with  lozenge  panes  unbroken,  flowered 


CHRISTMAS  209 

curtains  at  the  windows,  the  light  of  lamp  and 
wood  stove  shining  out.  And  as  sharply  as  if 
it  had  been  painted  on  the  air,  he  saw  some  un 
important  incident  in  his  life  there  —  a  four- 
wheel  carriage  drawn  up  at  the  door  with  some 
Christmas  guests  just  arriving,  and  himself 
and  Letty  and  Malcolm  in  the  open  doorway. 
He  could  not  remember  who  the  guests  were,  or 
whether  he  had  been  glad  to  see  them,  and  he 
had  no  wish  in  the  world  to  see  those  guests 
again.  But  the  simple,  casual,  homely  incident 
became  to  him  the  sign  of  all  that  makes  up 
everyday  life,  the  everyday  life  of  folk  —  of  folks 
—  from  which  he  had  so  long  been  absent. 

His  eye  went  down  the  dark  little  street 
where  were  the  houses  of  the  men  who  were 
his  factory  "hands."  Just  for  a  breath  he  saw 
them  as  they  were,  —  the  chorus  to  the  thing 
he  was  thinking  about.  They  were  all  think 
ing  about  it,  too.  Every  one  of  them  knew 


210  CHRISTMAS 

what  he  knew.  .  .  .  Just  for  a  breath  he  saw 
the  little  street  as  it  was  :  an  entity.  Then  the 
sight  closed,  but  through  him  ran  again  that 
sense  of  keener  being,  so  poignant  that  now,  as 
his  veins  flowed  with  it,  something  deeper 
within  him  almost  answered. 

He  wheeled  impatiently  from  where  he  stood. 
He  wanted  to  do  something.  At  the  end  of  the 
street  he  could  see  them  crossing  under  the 
light,  on  their  way  to  Mary  Chavah's.  Abel 
and  Simeon  might  stop  for  him  .  .  .  but  how 
could  he  go  there,  among  the  folk  whom  he 
had  virtually  denied  their  Christmas?  What 
would  they  have  to  say  to  him?  Yet  what 
they  should  say  would,  after  all,  matter  noth 
ing  to  him  .  .  .  and  perhaps  he  would  hear 
them  say  something  about  Bruce  and  Jenny. 
Still,  he  had  nothing  to  take  there,  as  Abel  had 
suggested.  What  had  he  that  a  boy  would 
want  to  have?  Unless  . 


CHRISTMAS  211 

He  thought  for  a  moment.  Then  he  crossed 
the  street  to  what  had  been  his  house.  He  went 
in,  seeing  again  the  hallway  and  stair,  red-car 
peted,  and  the  door  opened  into  the  lamplit 
room  beyond.  He  found  and  lighted  an  end  of 
candle  that  he  knew,  and  made  his  way  up  the 
stair.  There  he  set  the  candle  down  and  lowered 
the  ladder  that  led  to  the  loft. 

In  the  loft,  a  gust  of  wind  from  the  skylight 
blew  out  the  flame  of  his  little  wick.  In  the 
darkness,  the  broken  panes  above  his  head 
looked  down  on  him  like  a  face,  and  that  face 
the  sky,  thousand-eyed.  He  mounted  a  box, 
pushed  up  the  frame,  and  put  out  his  head. 
The  sky  lay  near.  The  little  town  showed, 
heaped  roofs  and  lifting  smoke,  and  here 
and  there  a  light.  Sparkling  in  their  midst 
was  the  light  before  the  Town  Hall,  like  an 
eye  guarding  something  and  answering  to 
the  light  before  his  factory  and  to  the  other 


212  CHRISTMAS 

light  before  the  station,  where  the  world  went 
by.  High  over  all,  climbing  the  east,  came 
Capella,  and  seemed  to  be  standing  above  the 
village. 

As  he  looked,  the  need  to  express  what  he 
felt  beset  Ebenezer. 

"Quite  a  little  town,"  he  thought,  "quite  a 
little  town." 

He  closed  the  glass,  and  groped  in  the 
darkness  to  where  the  roof,  sloping  sharply,  met 
the  door.  There  he  touched  an  edge  of  some 
thing  that  swayed,  and  he  laid  hold  of  and  drew 
out  that  for  which  he  had  come :  Malcolm's 
hobbyhorse. 

Downstairs  in  the  hall  he  set  it  on  the  floor, 
examined  it,  rocked  it  with  one  finger.  The 
horse  returned  to  its  ancient  office  as  if  it  were 
irrevocably  ordained  to  service.  Ebenezer,  his 
head  on  one  side,  stood  for  some  tune  regarding 
it.  Then  he  slipped  something  in  its  worn 


CHRISTMAS  213 

saddle-pocket.     Last,  he  lifted  and  settled  the 
thing  under  his  arm. 

"I  donno  but  I  might  as  well  walk  around 
by  Mary  Chavah's  house/'  he  thought.  "I 
needn't  stay  long.  ..." 

At  Mary  Chavah's  house  the  two  big  par 
lours,  the  hall,  the  stairs,  the  dining  room,  even 
the  tiny  bedroom  with  the  owl  wall  paper,  were 
filled  with  folk  come  to  welcome  the  little  boy. 
And  on  the  parlour  table,  set  so  that  he  should 
see  it  when  first  he  entered,  blazed  Ellen 
Bourne's  little  tree.  The  coffee  was  hot  on  the 
stove,  good  things  were  ready  on  the  table, 
and  the  air  was  electric  with  expectation,  with 
the  excitement  of  being  together,  with  the 
imminent  surprise  to  Mary,  and  with  curiosity 
about  the  little  stranger  from  Idaho. 

"  What'll  we  all  say  when  he  first  comes  in  ?" 
somebody  asked. 


214  CHRISTMAS 

"Might  say  ' Merry  Christmas/ "  two  or  three 
suggested. 

"Mercy,  no!"  replied  shocked  voices,  "not 
to  Mary  Chavah,  especially." 

But  however  they  should  say  it,  the  time  was 
quick  with  cheer. 

At  quarter  to  eight  the  gate  clicked.  The 
word  passed  from  one  to  another,  and  by  the 
time  a  step  sounded  on  the  porch  the  rooms 
were  still,  save  for  the  whispers,  and  a  voice 
or  two  that  kept  unconsciously  on  in  some 
remote  corner.  But  instead  of  the  door  opening 
to  admit  Mary  and  her  little  boy,  a  hesitating 
knock  sounded. 

Those  nearest  to  the  door  questioned 
one  another  with  startled  looks,  and  one 
of  them  threw  the  door  open.  On  the  thresh 
old  stood  Affer,  the  telegraph  operator,  who 
thrust  in  a  very  dirty  hand  and  a  yellow  en 
velope. 


CHRISTMAS  215 

"We  don't  deliver  nights,"  he  said,  "but  I 
thought  she'd  ought  to  have  this  one.  I'm 
going  home  to  wash  up,  and  then  I'll  be  back," 
he  added,  and  left  them  staring  at  one  another 
around  the  little  lighted  tree. 


XIII 

BEFORE  they  could  go  out  to  find  Mary,  as  a 
dozen  would  have  done,  she  was  at  the  thresh 
old,  alone.  She  seemed  to  understand  without 
wonder  why  they  were  there,  and  with  perfect 
naturalness  she  turned  to  them  to  share  her 
trouble. 

"He  hasn't  come,"  she  said  simply. 

Her  face  was  quite  white,  and  because  they 
usually  saw  her  with  a  scarf  or  shawl  over  her 
head,  she  looked  almost  strange  -to  them,  for 
she  wore  a  hat.  Also  she  had  on  an  unfamiliar 
soft-coloured  wrap  that  had  been  her  mother's 
and  was  kept  in  tissues.  She  had  dressed 
carefully  to  go  to  meet  the  child.  "I  might  as 
well  dress  up  a  little,"  she  had  thought,  "and 

I  guess  hell  like  colours  best." 

216 


CHRISTMAS  217 

Almost  before  she  spoke  they  put  in  her  hands 
the  telegram.  They  were  pressing  toward 
her,  dreading,  speechless,  trying  to  hear  what 
should  be  read.  She  stepped  nearer  to  the 
light  of  the  candles  on  the  little  tree,  read,  and 
reread  in  the  stillness.  When  she  looked  up 
her  face  was  so  illumined  that  she  was  strange 
to  them  once  more. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "it's  his  train.  It  was  late 
for  the  Local.  They Ve  put  him  on  the  Ex 
press,  and  it'll  drop  him  at  the  draw." 

The  tense  air  crumpled  into  breathings,  and 
a  soft  clamour  filled  the  rooms  as  they  told  one 
another,  and  came  to  tell  her  how  glad  they 
were.  She  pulled  herself  together  and  tried 
to  slip  into  her  natural  manner. 

"It  did  give  me  a  turn,"  she  confessed;  "I 
thought  he'd  been  —  he'd  got  ..." 

She  went  into  the  dining  room,  still  with 
out  great  wonder  that  they  were  all  there ;  but 


218  CHRISTMAS 

when  she  saw  the  women  in  white  aprons,  and 
the  table  arrayed,  and  on  it  Ellen  Bourne's 
Christmas  rose  blooming,  she  broke  into  a  little 
laugh. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "you  done  this  a-purpose  for 
him." 

"I  hope,  Mary,  you  won't  mind,"  Mis' 
Mortimer  Bates  said  formally,  "it  being  Christ 
mas,  so.  We'd  have  done  just  the  same  on 
any  other  day." 

" Oh,"  Mary  said,  "mind!" 

They  hardly  knew  her,  she  moved  among 
them  so  flushed  and  laughing  and  conformable, 
praising,  admiring,  thanking  them. 

"Honestly,  Mary,"  said  Mis'  Moran,  finally, 
"we'll  have  you  so  you  can't  tell  Christmas 
from  any  other  day  —  it'll  be  so  nice  !" 

The  Express  would  be  due  at  the  "draw"  at 
eight-thirty  —  eight-thirty-three,  Affer  told 
her  when  he  came  back,  "washed  up."  Mary 


CHRISTMAS  219 

watched  the  clock.  She  had  not  milked  or 
fed  the  cows  before  she  went,  because  she  had 
thought  that  he  would  like  to  watch  the  milking, 
and  it  would  be  something  for  him  to  do  on 
that  first  evening.  So,  when  she  could,  she 
took  her  shawl  and  slipped  out  to  the  shed  for 
the  pails  and  her  lantern,  and  went  alone  to 
the  stable. 

Mary  opened  the  door,  and  her  lantern  made 
a  golden  room  of  light  within  the  borderless 
shadow.  The  hay  smell  from  the  loft  and  the 
mangers,  the  even  breathing  of  the  cows,  the 
quiet  safety  of  the  place,  met  her.  She  hung 
her  lantern  in  its  accustomed  place,  and  went 
about  her  task. 

Her  mind  turned  back  to  the  time  that  had 
elapsed  since  the  Local  came  in  at  the  Old 
Trail  Town  station.  She  had  stood  there, 
with  the  children  about  her,  hardly  breathing 
while  the  two  Trail  Town  men  and  a  solitary 


220  CHRISTMAS 

traveling  man  had  alighted.  There  had  been 
no  one  else.  In  terror  lest  the  child  should  be 
carried  past  the  station,  she  had  questioned  the 
conductor,  begged  him  to  go  in  and  look  again, 
parleyed  with  him  until  he  had  swung  his 
lantern.  Then  she  had  turned  away  with  the 
children,  utterly  unable  to  formulate  anything. 
There  was  no  other  train  to  stop  at  Old  Trail 
Town  that  night.  It  must  mean  disaster 
.  .  .  indefinable  disaster  that  had  somehow 
engulfed  him  and  had  not  pointed  the  way  that 
he  had  gone.  She  recalled,  now,  that  she 
had  refused  Buff  Miles's  invitation  to  ride,  but 
had  suffered  him  to  take  the  children.  Then 
she  had  set  out  to  walk  home. 

On  that  walk  home  she  had  unlived  her 
plans.  Obscure  speculations,  stirring  in  her 
fear,  at  first  tormented  her,  and  then  gave 
place  to  the  conclusion  that  John  had  changed 
his  mind,  had  seen  perhaps  that  he  could  not 


CHRISTMAS  221 

after  all  let  the  child  go  so  far,  had  found 
some  one  else  to  take  him;  and  that  the  morrow 
would  bring  a  letter  to  tell  her  so.  In  any 
case,  she  was  not  to  have  him.  The  conclusion 
swept  her  with  the  vigour  of  certainty.  But 
instead  of  the  relief  for  which  she  would  have 
looked,  that  certainty  gave  her  nothing  but 
desolation.  Until  the  moment  when  the  ex 
pectation  seemed  to  die  she  had  not  divined 
how  it  had  grown  into  her  days,  as  subtly  as 
.the  growth  of  little  cell  and  little  cell.  And 
now  the  weight  upon  her,  instead  of  lifting, 
soaring  in  the  possibility  of  the  return  of  her 
old  freedom,  lay  the  more  heavily,  and  her 
sense  of  oppression  became  abysmal.  .  .  . 
"Something  is  going  to  happen,"  she  had  kept 
saying.  "Something  has  happened.  .  .  ." 

So  she  had  got  on  toward  her  own  door. 
There  the  swift  relief  was  like  an  upbearing 
into  another  air,  charged  with  more  intimate 


222  CHRISTMAS 

largess  for  life.  Now  Mary  sat  in  the  stable 
in  a  sense  of  happy  reality  that  clothed  all  her 
feeling  —  rather,  in  a  sense  of  superreality, 
which  she  did  not  know  how  to  accept.  .  .  . 
So,  slowly  singing  in  her  as  she  sat  at  her  task, 
came  that  which  had  waited  until  she  should 
open  the  way.  .  .  . 

In  the  stable  there  was  that  fusion  of  shadow 
and  light  in  which  captive  spaces  reveal  all 
their  mystery.  Little  areas  of  brightness, 
of  functioning ;  then  dimness,  then  the  deep. 
Brightness  in  which  surfaces  of  worn  floor, 
slivered  wall,  dusty  glass,  showed  values  more 
specific  than  those  of  colour.  Dimness  in  which 
gray  rafters  with  wavering  edges,  rough  posts 
each  with  an  accessory  of  shadow,  an  old  har 
ness  in  grotesque  loops,  ceased  to  be  back 
ground  and  assumed  roles.  The  background 
itself,  modified  by  many  an  unshadowed  prom 
ontory,  was  accented  in  caverns  of  manger  and 


CHRISTMAS  223 

roof.  The  place  revealed  mystery  and  beauty 
in  the  casual  business  of  saying  what  had  to 
be  said. 

Mary  filled  her  arms  with  hay,  and  turned 
to  the  manger.  The  raw  smell  of  the  clover 
smote  her,  and  it  was  as  sweet  as  Spring  re- 
promised.  She  stood  for  a  moment  with  the 
hay  in  her  arms,  her  breath  coming  swiftly.  .  .  . 

Down  on  the  marsh,  not  half  an  hour  away, 
he  was  coming  to  her,  to  be  with  her,  as  she 
had  grown  used  to  imagining  him.  She  had 
thought  that  he  was  not  coming,  and  he  was 
almost  here.  .  .  .  She  knew  now  that  she  was 
glad  of  this,  no  matter  what  it  brought  her; 
glad,  as  she  had  never  known  how  to  be 
glad  of  anything  before.  He  was  coming  — 
there  was  a  thrill  in  the  words  every  time 
that  she  thought  them.  Already  she  was  wel 
coming  him  in  her  heart,  already  he  was  here, 
already  he  was  born  into  her  life.  .  .  . 


224  CHRISTMAS 

.  .  .  With  a  soft,  fierce  rush  of  feeling  not 
her  own,  it  seemed  to  her  that  her  point  of 
perception  was  somehow  drawn  inward,  as  if 
she  no  longer  saw  from  the  old  places,  as  if 
something  in  her  that  was  not  used  to  looking, 
looked.  In  the  seat  where  her  will  had  been 
was  no  will.  But  somewhere  in  there,  beyond 
all  conflict,  she  felt  herself  to  be.  Beyond  a 
thousand  mists,  volitions,  little  seekings  for 
comfort,  rebellions  at  toil,  the  cryings  of  per 
sonality  for  its  physical  own,  she  stood  at 
last,  herself  within  herself.  And  that  which, 
through  the  slow  process  of  her  life  and  of  life 
and  being  immeasurably  before  her,  had  been 
seeking  its  expression,  building  up  its  own 
vehicle  of  incarnation,  quite  suddenly  and  sim 
ply  flowered.  It  was  as  if  the  weight  and  the 
striving  within  her  had  been  the  pangs  of  some 
birth.  She  stood,  as  light  of  heart  as  a  little 
child,  filled  with  peace  and  tender  exaltation. 


CHRISTMAS  225 

These  filled  her  on  the  road  which  she  took 
to  meet  him  —  and  took  alone,  for  she  would 
have  no  one  go  with  her.  ("What's  come 
over  Mary?"  they  asked  one  another  in  the 
kitchen.  "  She  acts  like  she  was  somebody  else 
and  herself  too.")  The  night  lay  about  her 
as  any  other  winter  night,  white  and  black, 
—  a  clean  white  world  on  which  men  set  a 
pattern  of  highway  and  shelter,  a  clean  dark 
sky  on  which  a  story  is  written  in  stars; 
and  between  —  no  mystery,  but  only  growth. 
Out  toward  the  drawbridge  the  road  was  not 
well  broken.  She  went,  stumbling  in  the 
ruts  and  hardly  conscious  of  them.  And 
Mary  thought  — 

"Something  in  me  is  glad. 

"It's  as  if  something  in  me  knew  how 
to  be  glad  more  than  I  ever  knew  how 
alone. 

"For  I'm  nothing  but  me,  here  in  Old  Trail 
Q 


226  CHRISTMAS 

Town,  and  yet  it's  as  if  Something  had  come, 
secret,  on  purpose  to  make  me  know  why  to 
be  glad. 

"It's  something  in  the  world  bigger  than  I 
know  about. 

"It's  in  me,  and  I  guess  it  was  in 
folks  before  me,  and  it  will  be  in  folks 
always. 

"It  isn't  just  for  Ebenezer  Rule  and  the 
City. 

"It's  for  everybody,  here  in  Old  Trail  Town 
as  much  as  anywhere. 

"It's  for  folks  that's  hungry  for  it,  and  it's 
for  folks  that  ain't. 

"It's  always  been  in  the  world  and  it  always 
will  be  in  the  world,  and  some  day  we'll  know 
what  to  do." 

But  this  was  hardly  in  her  feeling,  or 
even  in  her  thought ;  it  lay  within  her  thanks 
giving  that  the  child  was  coming;  and  he 


CHRISTMAS  227 

only  a  little  way  down  there  across  the 
marsh. 

...  It  seemed  quite  credible  and  even 
fitting  that  the  mighty,  rushing,  lighted  Ex 
press,  which  seldom  stopped  at  Old  Trail 
Town,  should  that  night  come  thundering 
across  the  marsh,  and  slow  down  at  the  draw 
bridge  for  her  sake  and  the  little  boy's.  Sev 
eral  coaches'  length  from  where  she  stood  she 
saw  a  lantern  shine  where  they  were  lifting 
him  down.  She  ran  ankle  deep  through  the 
thinly  crusted  snow. 

"That's  it!"  said  the  conductor.  "All  the 
way  from  Idaho  !"  and  swung  his  lantern  from 
the  step.  "Merry  Christmas  !"  he  called  back. 

The  little  thing  clasping  Mary's  hand  sud 
denly  leaped  up  and  down  beside  her. 

"Merry  Christmas!  Merry  Christmas! 
Merry  Christmas!"  he  shouted  with  all  his 
might. 


228  CHRISTMAS 

Mary  Chavah  stood  silent,"  and  as  the  train 
drew  away  held  out  her  hand,  still  in  silence, 
for  the  boy  to  take. 

As  the  noise  of  the  train  lessened,  he 
looked  up. 

"Are  you  her  ?  "  he  asked  soberly. 

"Yes,"  she  cried  joyously,  "I'm  her  !" 

Their  way  led  east  between  high  banks  of 
snow.  At  the  end  of  the  road  was  the  village, 
looking  like  something  lying  on  the  great  white 
plate  of  the  meadows  and  being  offered  to  one 
who  needed  it.  At  the  far  end  of  the  road 
which  was  Old  Trail  Road,  hung  the  blue  arc 
light  of  the  Town  Hall,  center  to  the  constella 
tion  of  the  home  lights  and  the  shop  lights  and 
the  street  lights.  There,  in  her  house,  were  her 
neighbours,  gathered  to  do  no  violence  to  that 
Christmas  paper  of  theirs,  since  there  was  to 
be  no  "present  trading,"  no  "money  spending." 


CHRISTMAS  229 

Nevertheless,  they  had  drawn  together  by  com 
mon  consent,  and  it  was  Christmas  Eve.  She 
knew  it  now  :  There  is  no  arbitrary  shut 
ting  out  of  that  for  which  Christmas  stands. 
As  its  spirit  was  in  the  village,  so  its  spirit 
is  in  the  world  —  denied  indeed,  put  upon, 
crowned  with  mockery,  dragged  in  the  dirt, 
bearing  alien  burdens,  but  through  it  all  im 
maculate,  waiting  for  men  to  cross  the  thresh 
old  at  which  it  never  ceases  to  beckon  to  a 
common  heritage  :  Home  of  the  world,  with 
a  thousand  towers  shining  with  uncounted 
lights,  lying  very  near  —  above  the  village,  at 
the  end  of  the  Old  Trail  Road,  upon  the 
earth  at  the  end  of  a  yet  unbeaten  path  — 
where  men  face  the  sovereign  fact  of  human- 
hood. 

...  But  all  this  lay  within  Mary's  dumb 
thanksgiving  that  the  child  was  running 
at  her  side.  And  the  vision  that  she  saw 


230  CHRISTMAS 

streamed  down  from  Capella,  of  the  bright 
ness  of  an  hundred  of  our  suns,  the  star  that 
stood  in  the  east  above  the  village  where  she 
lived. 

Lanterns  glowed  through  the  roadside  shrub 
bery,  little  kindly  lights,  like  answers ;  and  at 
a  bend  in  the  road  voices  burst  about  them, 
and  Buff  Miles  and  the  children,  Gussie  and 
Bennet  and  Tab  and  Pep  and  little  Emily, 
ran,  singing,  and  closed  about  Mary  and  the 
child,  and  went  on  with  them,  slipping  into 
the  "church  choir  Christmas  carols,"  and 
more,  that  Buff  had  been  fain  to  teach  them. 
The  music  filled  the  quiet  night,  rose,  in 
the  children's  voices,  like  an  invocation  to  all 
time. 

"One  for  the  way  it  all  begun, 
Two  for  the  way  it  all  has  run, 
What  three' II  be  for  I  do  forget, 
But  what  will  be  has  not  been  yet. 


CHRISTMAS  231 

So  holly  and  mistletoe, 
So  holly  and  mistletoe, 
So  holly  and  mistletoe 
Over  and  over  and  over,  oh!" 

Between  songs  the  children  whispered  to 
gether  for  a  minute. 

"What's  the  new  little  boy's  name?"  asked 
Tab. 

Nobody  knew.  That  would  be  something 
to  find  out. 

"Well,"  Tab  said,  "to-morrow  morning, 
right  after  breakfast,  I'm  going  to  bring  The- 
ophilus  Thistledown  down  and  lend  him  to 
him." 

"Ain't  we  going  to  bury  Sandy  Claus  right 
after  breakfast?"  demanded  Gussie. 

And  all  the  children,  even  little  Emily,  an 
swered  : 

"No,  let's  not." 

They    all   went    on    together    and    entered 


232  CHRISTMAS 

Mary's  gate.  Those  within, —  hearing  the  sing 
ing,  had  opened  the  door,  and  they  brought 
them  through  that  deep  arch  of  warmth  and 
light.  Afterward,  no  one  could  remember 
whether  or  not  the  greeting  had  been  "Merry 
Christmas,"  but  there  could  have  been  no  mis 
taking  what  everybody  meant. 


XIV 

AT  his  gate  in  the  street  wall  lined  with  snow- 
bowed  lilacs  and  mulberries,  Ebenezer  Rule 
waited  in  the  dark  for  his  two  friends  to  come 
back.  He  had  found  Kate  Kerr  in  his  kitchen 
methodically  making  a  jar  of  Christmas  cook 
ies.  ("  You've  got  to  eat,  if  it  is  Christmas/7 
she  had  defended  herself  in  a  whisper.)  And 
to  her  stupefaction  he  had  dispatched  her  to 
Mary  Chavah's  with  her  entire  Christmas 
baking  in  a  basket. 

"I  don't  believe  they've  got  near  enough  for 
all  the  folks  I  see  going,"  he  explained  it. 

While  he  went  within  doors  he  had  left  the 
hobbyhorse  in  the  snow,  close  to  the  wall; 
and  he  came  back  there  to  wait.  The  street 

had  emptied.    By  now  every  one  had  gone  to 

233 


234  CHRISTMAS 

Mary  Cha  van's.  Once  he  caught  the  gleam 
of  lanterns  down  the  road  and  heard  children's 
voices  singing.  For  some  time  he  heard  the 
singing,  and  after  it  had  stopped  he  fancied 
that  he  heard  it.  Startled,  he  looked  up  into  the 
wide  night  lying  serene  above  the  town,  and 
not  yet  become  vexed  by  the  town's  shadows 
and  interrupted  by  their  lights.  It  was  as  if 
the  singing  came  from  up  there.  But  the 
night  kept  its  way  of  looking  steadily  beyond 
him. 

...  It  came  to  Ebenezer  that  the  night  had 
not  always  been  so  unconscious  of  his  pres 
ence.  The  one  long  ago,  for  example,  when 
he  had  slept  beneath  this  wall  and  dreamed 
that  he  had  a  kingdom;  those  other  nights, 
when  he  had  wandered  abroad  with  his  star 
glass.  Then  the  night  used  to  be  something 
else.  It  had  seemed  to  meet  him,  to  admit 
him.  Now  he  knew,  and  for  a  long  time  had 


CHRISTMAS  235 

known,  that  when  he  was  abroad  in  the  night 
he  was  there,  so  to  say,  without  its  permission. 
As  for  men,  he  could  not  tell  when  relation  with 
them  had  changed,  when  he  had  begun  to  think 
of  them  as  among  the  externals ;  but  he  knew 
that  now  he  ran  along  the  surface  of  them  and 
let  them  go.  He  never  met  them  as  Others,  as 
belonging  to  countless  equations  of  which  he 
was  one  term,  and  they  playing  that  wonder 
ful,  near  role  of  Other.  Thus  he  had  got  along, 
as  if  his  own  individuation  were  the  only  one 
that  had  ever  occurred  and  as  if  all  the  mass  of 
mankind  —  and  the  Night  and  the  Day  — 
were  undifferentiated  from  some  substance  all 
inimical. 

Then  this  vast  egoism  had  heard  itself  ex 
pressed  in  the  mention  of  Bruce's  baby  — 
the  third  generation.  But  by  the  great  sorcery 
wherewith  Nature  has  protected  herself,  this 
mammoth  sense  of  self,  when  it  extends  unto  the 


236  CHRISTMAS 

next  generations,  becomes  a  keeper  of  the  race. 
Ebenezer  had  been  touched,  relaxed,  disinte 
grated.  Here  was  an  interest  outside  himself 
which  was  yet  no  external.  Vast,  level  reaches 
lay  about  that  fact,  and  all  long  unexplored. 
But  these  were  peopled.  He  saw  them 
peopled.  .  .  . 

...  As  in  the  cheer  and  stir  within  the  house 
where  that  night  were  gathered  his  townsfolk, 
his  neighbours,  his  "hands."  He  had  thought 
that  their  way  of  meeting  him,  if  he  chose 
to  go  among  them,  would  matter  nothing. 
Abruptly  now  he  saw  that  it  would  matter 
more  than  he  could  bear.  They  were  in  there 
at  Mary's,  the  rooms  full  of  little  families,  get 
ting  along  as  best  they  could,  taking  pride  in 
their  children,  looking  ahead,  looking  ahead  — 
and  they  would  not  know  that  he  understood.  He 
could  not  have  defined  offhand  what  it  was 
that  he  understood.  But  it  had,  it  seemed, 


CHRISTMAS  237 

something  to  do  with  Letty's  account  book  and 
Brace's  baby.  .  .  . 

Gradually  he  let  himself  face  what  it  was 
that  he  was  wanting  to  do.  And  when  he 
faced  that,  he  left  the  hobbyhorse  where  it 
was  under  the  wall  and  went  into  the  street. 

He  took  his  place  among  the  externals  of 
the  Winter  night,  himself  unconscious  of  them. 
The  night,  with  all  its  content,  a  thing  of 
explicable  fellowships,  lay  waiting  patiently  for 
those  of  its  children  who  knew  its  face.  In  the 
dark  and  under  the  snow  the  very  elements  of 
earth  and  life  were  obscured,  as  in  some  clear 
wash  correcting  too  strong  values.  He  moved 
along  the  village,  and  now  his  dominant  con 
sciousness  was  the  same  consciousness  in  which 
that  little  village  lived.  But  he  knew  it  only 
as  the  impulse  that  urged  him  on  toward  Jenny's 
house.  If  he  went  to  Jenny's,  if  he  signified  so 
that  he  wished  not  to  be  cut  off  from  her  and 


238  CHRISTMAS 

Bruce  and  the  baby,  if  he  asked  Bruce  to  come 
back  to  the  business,  these  meant  a  lifetime  of 
modification  to  the  boy's  ideals  for  that  busi 
ness,  and  modification  to  the  lives  of  the 
"hands"  back  there  in  Mary  Chavah's  house 
—  and  to  something  else.  .  .  . 

"What  else?"  he  asked  himself. 

Mechanically  he  looked  up  and  saw  the  heav 
ens  crowded  with  bright  watchers.  In  that 
high  field  one  star,  brighter  than  the  others, 
hung  over  the  little  town.  He  found  himself 
trying  to  see  the  stars  as  they  had  looked  to 
him  years  ago,  when  they  and  the  night  had 
seemed  to  mean  something  else.  .  .  . 

"What  else?"  he  asked  himself. 

The  time  did  not  seem  momentous.  It  was 
only  very  quiet.  Nothing  new  was  there, 
nothing  different.  It  had  always  been  so. 
The  night  lay  in  a  sovereign  consciousness  of 
being  more  than  just  itself.  "Do  you  think 


CHRISTMAS  239 

that  you  are  all  just  you  and  nothing  else?" 
it  was  seen  to  be  compassionately  asking. 

"What  else?"  Ebenezer  asked  himself. 

He  did  not  face  this  yet.  But  in  that  hour 
which  seemed  pure  essence,  with  no  attenuat 
ing  sound  or  touch,  he  kept  on  up  the  hill 
toward  Jenny's  house. 

Mary  Chavah  left  ajar  the  door  from  the 
child's  room  to  the  room  where,  in  the  dark, 
the  tree  stood.  He  had  wanted  the  door,  to 
be  ajar  "so  the  things  I  think  about  can  go 
back  and  forth,"  he  had  explained. 

In  the  dining  room  she  wrapped  herself  in 
the  gray  shawl  and  threw  up  the  two  windows. 
New  air  swept  in,  cleansing,  replacing,  pre 
vailing.  Her  guests  had  left  her  early,  as  is  the 
way  in  Old  Trail  Town.  Then  she  had  had 
her  first  moments  with  the  child  alone.  He  had 
done  the  things  that  she  had  not  thought  of 


240  CHRISTMAS 

his  doing  but  had  inevitably  recognized  :  Had 
delayed  his  bed-going,  had  magnified  and  re 
peated  the  offices  of  his  journey,  had  shown 
her  the  contents  of  his  pockets,  had  repeatedly 
mentioned  by  their  first  names  his  playmates 
in  Idaho  and  shown  surprise  when  she  asked 
him  who  they  were.  Mary  stood  now  by  the 
window  conscious  of  a  wonderful  thing :  That 
it  seemed  as  if  he  had  been  there  always. 

In  the  clean  inrush  of  the  air  she  was  aware 
of  a  faint  fragrance,  coming  to  her  once  and 
again.  She  looked  down  at  her  garden,  lying 
wrapped  in  white  and  veiled  with  black,  like 
some  secret  being.  Three  elements  were  slowly 
fashioning  it,  while  the  fourth,  a  soft  fire  within 
her,  answered  them.  The  fragrance  made  it 
seem  as  if  the  turn  of  the  year  were  very  near, 
as  if  its  prophecy,  evident  once  in  the  October 
violets  in  her  garden,  were  come  again.  But 
when  she  moved,  she  knew  that  the  fra- 


"THE   THREE   MEN    STEPP£Q 

LAMPLIG'H-T"41.  5^-  >     '•' 


CHRISTMAS  241 

grance  came  from  within  the  room,  from 
Ellen  Bourne's  Christmas  rose,  blossoming 
on  the  table.  .  .  .  Above,  her  eye  fell  on 
the  picture  that  Jenny  had  brought  to  her  on 
that  day  when  she  had  all  but  emptied  the 
house,  as  if  in  readiness.  Almost  she  under 
stood  now  the  passionate  expectation  in  that 
face,  not  unlike  the  expectation  of  those  who 
in  her  dream  had  kept  saying  "  You." 

There  was  a  movement  in  her  garden  and 
on  the  walk  footsteps.  The  three  men  stepped 
into  the  rectangle  of  lamplight  —  Abel  Ames 
and  Simeon,  who  had  left  the  party  a  little 
before  the  others  and,  hurrying  back  with  the 
gifts  that  they  planned,  had  met  Ebenezer  at 
his  gate,  getting  home  from  Jenny's  house.  In 
Abel's  arms  was  something  globed,  like  a  little 
world;  in  Simeon's,  the  tall,  gray-gowned 
Saint  Nicholas  taken  from  the  Exchange  win 
dow,  the  lettered  sign  absent,  but  the  little  flag 


242  CHRISTMAS 

still  in  his  hand;  and  Ebenezer  was  carrying 
the  hobbyhorse.  If  at  him  the  other  two  had 
wondered  somewhat,  they  :had  said  nothing, 
in  that  fashion  of  treating  the  essential  which 
is  as  peculiar  to  certain  simple,  robust  souls  as 
to  other  kinds  of  great  souls. 

"Has  the  boy  gone  to  bed?"  Abel  asked 
without  preface. 

"Yes,"  Mary  answered,  "he  has.    I'm  sorry." 

"Never  mind,"  Simeon  whispered,  "you  can 
give  him  these  in  the  morning." 

Mary,  her  shawl  half  hiding  her  face,  stooped 
to  take  what  the  three  lifted. 

"They  ain't  presents,  you  know,"  Abel 
assured  her  positively.  "They're  just  —  well, 
just  to  let  him  know." 

Mary  set  the  strange  assortment  on  the  floor 
of  the  dining  room  —  the  things  that  were  to 
be  nothing  in  themselves,  only  just   "to  let  * 
him  know." 


CHRISTMAS  243 

" Thank  you  for  him,"  she  said  gently.  "And 
thank  you  for  me,"  she  added. 

Ebenezer  fumbled  for  a  moment  at  his  bea 
ver  hat,  and  took  it  off.  Then  the  other  two 
did  so  to  their  firm-fixed  caps.  And  with  an 
impulse  that  came  from  no  one  could  tell 
whom,  the  three  spoke  —  the  first  time  hesi 
tatingly,  the  next  time  together  and  confi 
dently. 

"  Merry  Christmas.  Merry  Christmas,"  they 
said. 

Mary  Chavah  lifted  her  hand. 

"Merry  Christmas  !"  she  cried. 


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for  what  it  means  in  money,  but  for  itself;  it  also  has  in  it  a 
lurking  devil  which  portends  evil  happenings.  The  series  of 
incidents  which  these  qualities  in  the  gem  bring  about,  taken 
with  the  love  story,  which  runs  through  it  all,  comprise  a  novel 
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women  he  loves,  and  the  great  novel  he  writes,  is  the  design 
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Mother 

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"A  little  book  that  can  be  finished  in  an  hour,  but  the  sweet 
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set  aside.  .  .  .  Before  I  had  covered  ten  pages  I  realized  that 
I  had  something  worth  its  weight  in  gold.  What  theme  could 
be  more  interesting  to  the  ordinary  reader  than  *  Mother,' 
especially  when  it  is  a  panegyric  on  maternal  devotion  ?  The 
author  was  fortunate  in  her  selection  and  still  happier  in  her 
treatment  of  it,  for  if  there  is  anything  that  appeals,  it  is  a  true 
loyal  discussion  of  mother  and  mother-love.  In  modern  fiction 
we  have  too  little  of  the  chastening  and  purifying  presence  of 
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THE  CHRISTMAS  EDITION  OF  JACK  LONDON'S 

The  Call  of  the  Wild 

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love  his  masterpiece,  this  new  edition  of  "The  Call  of  the 
Wild"  will  mean  much.  Some  of  the  previous  issues  of  this 
great  book  were  thought  to  be  beautiful,  but  none  of  them 
seems  so  now  in  comparison  with  the  latest  one,  the  make-up 
of  which  is  distinguished  by  a  number  of  features.  In  the  first 
place  there  are  many  full-page  plates  reproduced  in  color  from 
paintings  done  by  Mr.  Bransom.  More  than  this,  the  first 
two  pages  of  each  chapter  are  printed  in  colors  and  decorated 
with  head  pieces  and  drawings,  while  every  other  two  pages 
carry  black  and  white  half  tones  in  the  text,  also  the  work 
of  Mr.  Bransom. 


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OCT  11  1947 


1956 


LD  21-100m-12,'46(A2012sl6)4120 


(5/52 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


'A*/!  Alr£  ISftC,  All/I 


ii  ••!• 


